More teachers retiring mid-year

GREEN BAY - Fifth-grade teacher Kathi Sikich has worked in public schools for more than a quarter century, the last 12 years at McAuliffe Elementary. John Dunlap, a math teacher at Preble high, has spent 37 years in public education.

"I love watching the kids understand math," Dunlap said.

On January 20, both will become former teachers. The two are among 70 employees in the Green Bay district calling it quits in the middle of the school year. Sixty-six of those employees are teachers; four are administrators and staff. If that sounds like a lot, it is. In fact, last year, just one teacher retired in the middle of the year. The year before that, just three retired.

• Click here for a list of the schools and subject taught by the mid-year retirees.

Some parents aren't too happy with what's happening this year.

"It is unfortunate for the kids," said Chris Busse. His son is in Sikich's class at McAuliffe. Busse found out at the start of the school year that she would be leaving in January.

"I was a little put off by it," he said. "It's a whole new transition in the middle of the year that kids probably don't need to go through."

Tonya Polomis also has a fifth grade son at McAuliffe. Before school started, when she found out Sikich would be leaving, she asked that her son have a different teacher.

"I just think that it's not fair to him to have to have a teacher that is leaving," Polomis said. "He has to get used to a new teacher in the middle if the year and that takes away from his learning time."

District leaders admit, changing teachers in the middle of the year won't be easy for students. Assistant superintendent Margaret Christensen also it won't be easy to fill so many openings in the middle of the school year.

"Is it a challenge? Yes it is. But it's a challenge we embrace," Christensen said.

The district has posted 58 teaching jobs and had 695 applicants. According to Christensen, 104 of those people applied for three open kindergarten positions; 45 applied for one gym teacher position, and 49 people put their name in for one opening as a math teacher.

Whem asked what the number of applicants tells her Christensen replied, "It tells me that there are still people who really want to teach."

What's driving this unprecedented wave of mid-year retirements? It can all be traced back to what happened in February. That's when the state Capitol was thrust into chaos. The governor had proposed sweeping changes in collective bargaining for public workers. With a retirement deadline in early March, some teachers in Green Bay had to make a choice: either retire under their current contract or see what happened after the dust settles.

Sikich and Dunlap, and 138 other teachers and staff, opted for retirement. About half retired at the end of June, the rest decided to work until January.

"I just chose January because I wasn't ready to retire and I wanted to teach as long as I could and still get those benefits," Sikich said.

The main benefit teachers say they were afraid of losing is called the Emeritus Program. Employees who qualify for the benefit get one year's salary paid over three years. That is in addition to pension benefits. In return, the retiree has to work for the district 10 days each year.

On average, the Emeritus program costs taxpayers $3.5 million a year. This year, because there are so many more retirements than usual, it will cost an estimated $4.3 million.

The district does have new work rules which replaced many of the provisions in the union contract.

• Click here to read the district's Memorandum of Agreement with the Green Bay Education Association.

As part of those rules, the district kept the Emeritus program, with a few changes. Employees can still receive the benefit but the payout varies depending on how long someone has worked in the district. Newly-hired employees will not get it. But for longtime teachers, nothing changed.

"I can almost guarantee that there probably would've been more teachers like myself that would've stayed because of the fact that we weren't going to lose those benefits but at the time, it looked like we were going to lose it all," Dunlap said.

Rich Carlstedt from the Brown County Taxpayers Association has criticized the Emeritus program in the past. But in this situation, Carlstedt says he doesn't have a problem with it. That's because the district will now save money by hiring new teachers.

"Now is the time to do it, believe it or not," Carlstedt said. "I don't look at the sudden increase in retirements as anything negative. I think it's good."

Maybe it's good for the district's bottom line. But what about the students? John Dunlap knows some of the students in his algebra class will be affected by the mid-year change.

"Why not stay? Because of the threat at that time," Dunlap said. "We had to decide to retire or not with the old retirement package and there was no guarantee because we didn't know what the new contract was going to offer. And there was