BY JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — You could say School Superintendent Maureen Macera faced an impossible challenge Wednesday night.

She wanted the School Committee to reward her school administrators with a pay raise for the work they have done generating improvement in the district, but came forward with the request as storm clouds continue to hover over the department’s budget.
Macera credited the administrators with creating innovative programs to address state student performance requirements and also with helping to win an annual award of approximately $12 million in grants over and above the department’s $62 to $63 million annual operating budget.
The department has also been fiscally conservative in spending the money it is given and developed new ways of meeting its expenses, according to Macera. Concessions in health care coverage worked out with the Woonsocket Teachers Guild and support staff unions generated savings, helping the department to achieve a cumulative surplus of $792,000, she said.
The raises proposed would total an increase of $34,718 in the current budget, Macera told the committee and the department has another $230,000 in health cares savings coming in to cover that cost, she noted.
In the end, the School Committee unanimously rejected Macera’s request while contending the department should keep tight rein on its spending as a hedge against unforeseen expenses in the months ahead.
The panel appeared even reluctant to take up the proposal for consideration and School Committee Chairman Marc A. Dubois said he would do so only so that it could be discussed.
The committee had given local administrators -- a group of about 33 principals, directors and administrative clerical staff—two-year contracts last month as a concession to not being able to offer them a pay raise this year, he said.
 “We are in a very unpredictable economy,” Dubois said while explaining that school department costs such as fuel, electricity, and even food service could all rise higher than budgeted in the coming year.
 And while always being “a big supporter” of the district’s administrators, given the unpredictable economy Dubois said he could not support a pay raise for them at the present time.
 School Committeewoman Anita McGuire-Forcier noted the department is contractually obligated to give union teachers and teacher aids a 4-percent pay raise this year and in light of that fact she also would also vote against the added raise package this year. “But I do support you and all the hard work you do,” she said.
 School Committeewoman Michelle Williams was even more adamant over the district’s inability to consider administrative pay raises in the present economic climate and pointed to impact the current budget is already having local taxpayers.
 Williams said she recently spoke with an elderly couple living in the city who weren’t able to open their backyard swimming pool this summer because of the tax increase and higher fees resulting from this year’s city’s budget.
 “How would you justify it to those elderly people,” Williams said to Macera. “It’s a slap in the face of the taxpayer,” she added.
  Williams said Woonsocket is not alone in trying to hold the line on costs this year and asked Macera if she could point to a list of other district’s offering administrators the same raises.
 Many people in Woonsocket have gone without pay raises under the current economy, Williams said, and added she is among that group.
 “In these tough fiscal times Mayor Menard has asked for a wage freeze and we are going to hand out 4 percent raises, I’m sorry, I just can’t support it,” Williams said.
 School Committeewoman Eleanor Nadeau pointed to the department’s unsuccessful attempt to win a reduction in the already granted teacher pay raise of 4 percent as a hindrance to her own support of an administrative raise.
 The department still has not brought back all of the staff laid off in creating the budget and the teacher concession would have given the department some additional funding work out its budget concerns, according to Nadeau.
 “If they had accepted a 2 percent raise that would been $600,000 more that we would have had in the budget and if they had accepted a freeze that would been $1 million more in the budget,” she said.
 School Committeewoman Linda Majewski also voiced opposition to a raise for administrators but added she believed the issue might be something the department could weigh later when it has a better understanding of costs such as fuel and food service.
 “When we see what all the numbers are maybe we can sit down at that time and discuss it again,” she said