By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The school department will apparently finish work on staffing levels for the coming school year without the help of the Woonsocket Teachers Guild.

Schools Supt. Maureen Macera wanted to lower teacher salary costs for the coming year under a round of talks with the Guild — but those negotiations have ended, School Committee Chairman Marc A. Dubois reported Wednesday.
The news came from Woonsocket Teacher Guild President Richard DiPardo after he conducted a poll of the Guild’s membership, Dubois said.
“According to Richard DiPardo, a majority of the membership wanted to stay with the raise they are scheduled to receive this year,” Dubois said. The teachers cited concern over increased gasoline costs and food prices as reason for sticking to their contractually established raise, he said.
When contacted Wednesday, DiPardo declined comment on the talks with the school department. Representatives of the Guild would be at the upcoming July 16 School Committee meeting, but DiPardo repeated that his organization would not be making any comment on the talks with the department before that time.
The teachers and teacher aides represented by the Guild are scheduled to receive a 4 percent raise in the final year of their three-year pact with the department. The contract had provided teachers with smaller raises of approximately 3 percent in the first two years of the agreement.
While the upcoming raise has been in place since the contract was approved, Macera had hoped to reach a potential deferment of some of the salary increase this year to help reduce the number of layoffs established during the creation of the $63 million 2008-09 schools budget.
The school department sent out notices to a total of 99 Guild members as part of that process. The layoffs were to allow staff reductions in elementary and middle school art, music and library programs as well as cuts in special education and high school business and foreign language offerings.
The School Committee has since found money from various sources to bring back about 45 of those laid off, but Dubois said an adjustment in teacher pay was needed to bring back more of those let go.
“This has been the most difficult budget year of my five years on the committee,” Dubois said, noting the troubles the department had in arriving at its current spending plan.
 To rehire the aforementioned 45, the school department used all available options, Dubois said, including the award of a portion of the Northern Rhode Island Collaborative surplus settlement money, an increase in the city’s contribution to schools, and savings on insurance costs.
To meet the budget, the department will now have to make the adjustments in programs allowed by its layoff notices. “We have no choice, we are really strapped,” he said, while pointing to expenses such fuel and electricity that continue to rise.
It could have been different, Dubois said, if the General Assembly had decided to act on creating a “fair funding” system for Rhode Island schools. The state’s current method of supporting schools pits urban communities like Woonsocket against the more affluent suburban communities, he noted.
“We would be receiving $13 million more this year if that funding system had been approved,” he said.