SPRINGFIELD —The Sabis International Charter School board of trustees voted Tuesday night to extend its contract with Springfield Education Management LLC for 30 days. The previous contract expired on May 31.
The board also approved a $26 million fiscal 2022 budget.
Atu White, trustees chairman, said attorneys for the board as well as Springfield Education Management agreed to extend the current contract to allow time to resolve a dispute around the wording of the new contract.
“A couple of people from the contract committee wanted SEM to submit updated language, which they did. Our attorney had a couple of follow up questions as to their language and I believe it was answered, so I will forward that to you all,” he said to the board during the online meeting.
Of the 12-member board, 11 members were present and all voted in favor of extending the contract. Negotiations have been ongoing since February 2020. White said the contract subcommittee will be discussing the updated language submitted by the management company at a June 8 meeting.
“Once our attorney has had an opportunity to review the language and give us his opinion in writing, the contract committee will discuss it in our meeting,” White said. “This gives you a couple of days to see what the update language is and where we are headed from there.”
The contract disagreement centers on who has authority over the school director. Under the current contract, the director reports to the Sabis Network, which provides the curriculum for the Springfield school and others around the world. Some trustees have argued the director should report instead to the board of trustees. Springfield Education Management, the local representative of the Sabis Network, believes Sabis should retain that control.
“SEM remains optimistic and feels it has made great concessions in an effort to try to resolve this impasse,” said Raipher Pellegrino, lawyer for Springfield Education Management.
If an agreement cannot be reached on the wording of the new contract, another option would be for the trustees to purchase a licensing agreement from Sabis, which would allow it to retain the name and the curriculum while exerting control over the director.
White said Springfield Education Management provided some information regarding the option to license, but did not go into details about it during the meeting. The fiscal 2022 budget the board approved Tuesday includes $515,000 for the purchase of books used in Sabis’ curriculum.
Wilfredo Lopez Jr., treasurer for the board, presented highlights of the budget along with Steven Bissonnette, business manager for the school.
The approved budget includes merit raises for teachers averaging 4{13aab5633489a05526ae1065595c074aeca3e93df6390063fabaebff206207ec} and $228,000 for building projects and equipment. It includes a $2.3 million surplus from the 2021 budget.
Bissonnette said the school is anticipating several million dollars in COVID-19 relief funding, including $2.6 million to be used in the next two years and an additional $5.8 million to be used in the next three years.
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