Riverhead school district proposes eliminating 38 full-time teaching positions, business official says

The Riverhead school district needs to eliminate roughly 38 full-time equivalent teaching positions next year, according to the district’s business official.

The full-time equivalent of 37.8 teaching positions in the district would be eliminated in the 2024-25 budget, Interim Assistant Superintendent for Business Marianne Cartisano said in an interview today. Fourteen of those positions will be empty by the end of this year — due to retirements or resignations — and will not be filled next school year, she said.

Cartisano would not go into detail as to what specific positions would be cut and said the proposal is still subject to change. The district is working with employees and the unions to fit employees that are having their positions eliminated to other positions, if possible, Cartisano said. 

The teacher’s union, the Riverhead Central Faculty Association, started having layoff meetings last week, president Gregory Wallace said.

Cartisano said people should “reserve reaction” to the news “until Tuesday night, where the information will be fully discussed and will be held in context to what the plans are and what the staffing plan will look like.”

The administration has proposed a $201.4 million budget for next school year — an increase of $9.4 million, or roughly 5%, over its current budget. The proposal would require the tax levy be raised 3.34%, the maximum allowable under the school district’s tax levy cap.

Cartisano is expected to discuss next year’s staffing plans at the next two Board of Education meetings. The school board is scheduled to vote on adopting a budget on April 16 and hold a hearing on the budget May 14. The budget will be up for a vote by district residents on May 21.

Cartisano said in a presentation last month that the district needs to reduce positions for its long-term financial health, and that some positions were funded by federal relief funding that ends this year. She emphasized that the district has seen an enormous increase of employees over the last five years with the increase in state foundation aid and federal coronavirus aid, including more than 100 faculty members. 

Employees are being laid off based on their seniority in the district, with the least senior employees being laid off first, she said. 

A look into the line-by-line budget proposal prepared by Cartisano, which is posted on the district’s website, offers hints into what positions might be on the chopping block. 

The most significant proposed cut is an 85% reduction to the salaries of elementary school specialists. These are teachers that specifically work to help students outside of special education who are falling behind in their learning. Ten interventionists this year are being paid using federal money to help make up for learning losses during the coronavirus pandemic.

Jenn Simoes, an elementary specialist and the vice president of the Riverhead Central Faculty Association, said these teachers typically focus on supplemental instruction for small groups of struggling students. 

With the specialists gone, helping those students falls to the classroom teacher. “If the responsibilities of the classroom teacher, then it compromises the frequency, it compromises the intensity, the group size and then also the targeting of the intervention and the progress monitoring,” Simoes said. “It all kind of is impacted.”

Smaller cuts to certain budget lines include those funding high school social studies, English, foreign language, and family and consumer sciences (known to most as home economics) teachers, as well as to middle school social studies, English, math, science and foreign language teachers. 

“This is purely because of money. It’s not because we don’t need them,” Wallace said. “It’s because we don’t have the money.”

Wallace blamed the district historically being shorted funding by the state, tax breaks given to developments by the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency, as well as the money the district contributes per pupil to the Riverhead Charter School, as responsible for the need to reduce staff.

Wallace said, in total, 54.8 positions are being cut in the new budget. Cartisano said that number is inaccurate and would only confirm RCFA positions being eliminated. “I can tell you that there are reductions from other unions and those conversations are continuing,” she said.

Wallace said positions outside of the teacher’s union being eliminated are primarily made up of teaching assistants. Elementary school teaching assistants have, outside of faculty, the largest reduction in the budget for their salaries — dropping from $678,544 to $150,788, or nearly 78%.  

As of January the district had the full-time equivalent of 45 teaching assistants, according to staffing data presented by Cartisano. The teaching assistants are represented by their own union, the Riverhead Teaching Assistants Association. The president of the union did not return an email requesting comment before this article was published.

The budget for administration salaries would also slightly decrease, according to the proposal. The co-president of the Riverhead Administrator’s Association did not return a call requesting comment before this article was published.