If the job paid $30,000, and their retirement pay was $20,000, then the employer would only offer $10,000 – just enough to bring it up to what everyone else was making.

I remember the outrage and sense of abandonment felt by people who had for twenty years spent six to nine months of each year away from their family working eighty hours each week while the homes and lifestyle that they lived were at the poverty level, and now what little benefit that they gained through that sacrifice was being held against them.

So you can imagine how I reacted when a parent at School Committeeman Avard's popular “Coffee With The School Board” at West High School this week indignantly accused school board members of unethical behavior in breaking the standing ROTC instructor contract and reducing their pay to reflect what these retired military professionals receive in their pension. The response from the crowd of about forty parents, teachers, and ROTC students, was one of unanimous outrage and support for the instructors.

School Committeeman Steve Dolman then took the opportunity to throw some gasoline on the fire by defending the move as “... these instructors are not qualified instructors, and yet between their Navy pay and the school district, they are making almost $100,000 each”.

A few parents then spoke and said that what ever these people earned while serving our country is independent to what we pay teachers in Manchester. A student asked “what do you consider a 'teacher'? Because our instructors teach us as much or more than any of our other teachers”. Dolman just took the hits.

Next one of the two instructors, a former Navy officer named Haffner and referred to by has students as 'Commander', engaged Dolman directly with “the facts”. Hafner claimed that he has a multiple degrees in biology and military science, two master's degrees, and is working on a third, and therefore considers himself 'qualified'. He then accused the board of reneging on the contract and reducing his pay without so much as allowing him to defend himself before the board.

Finally, the coup de grace.

A fit, sharp-looking, and polite young man stood forward and laid witness to how he personally was a troubled youth in this very school and that were it not for ROTC and 'Commander' his life would have been very different. But today, as a proud military professional, he is on his way to Georgia Tech to enter a college that before he could have only dreamed of.

Something doesn't add up.

I called up the BOSC Vice Chairman Katherine Labanaris, who was at another event that evening, to explain the school district's usery of those whom we should be offering our utmost respect.

She admitted that this affair was her doing and took full responsibility. But her version is very different from what was described and understood by all who were there.

The West High ROTC program is over forty years old. The Navy pays a stipend each year to pay the costs. There are two instructors. Sergent Pierreira is a former enlisted man with an associates degree. Commander Haffner has the advanced degrees discussed earlier. But neither are 'certified' by the State.

The original contract had the Navy paying the full salary and program costs. The Navy stipend was about half the amount that a teacher of similar experience would have made. The stipend was independent of their pension. In 1999, the instructors approached Superintendent Norman Tanguay and then Assistant Superintendent Tom Brennan about the pay disparity.

An agreement was reached that the instructors should be paid an amount commensurate with their peers, and the the school district would pay the difference between the Navy stipend and the teacher pay scale. Pensions were never a factor in this calculation. It is hard to see how Tom Brennan, a former Marine, could have allowed it.

But, an accounting mistake was made that resulted in the full scale salary being paid to these instructors along with their stipend, instead of scale minus stipend. So, now the tables are turned and these instructors are receiving substantially more than their peers, and the instructors don't bother to point the disparity out.

For ten years, these ROTC instructors are silently raking in the dough, and by all measures, doing a great job at what they do.

But this year, being challenged by an alderman budget that resulted in firing over seventy teachers, the school board started looking for money in quite places. That is when Katherine Labanaris noticed an ROTC line item for $248,000 for a program that serves less than 100 students and is supposed to be Navy funded.

She was outraged with the cost, especially after having to cut the Ombudsman program. She immediately took measures to reduce the instructor salary back down to the original amount of scale minus stipend (current $73,000 total Navy stipend).

It was unfortunate that neither Steve Dolman nor any other committeeman present had enough history or detailed knowledge of the budget to have noticed that disparity themselves or to be conversant with its details, because the negative public feelings that the school board attracted was significant. But I think that the halo over ROTC and the value that it provides will be on the agenda at the next BOSC meeting this October 13.

NO we should not.  I know that the commander made threats of going to Bedford or what have you but I don't think we should give in to such threats.  Maybe the Navy could send someone else to us that wouldn't mind accepting terms that weren't so one sided.