A Wiscasset teachers union’s grievance issue has landed in court. The school department is challenging an arbitrator’s award of four days’ pay he said teachers have coming from the 2017-18 school year.

According to the complaint the court received July 8, the award would have the department pay 68 teachers on the payroll in 2018 a total of more than $73,000.

July 26, a Lincoln County Superior Court justice gave Wiscasset Education Association an extension until Aug. 6 to answer the complaint. In it, the department argues the award contradicts Maine public policy and doesn’t reflect the contract. “(It) arbitrarily conferred an unearned windfall upon the teacher staff at the cost of the taxpayers.”

The complaint from Portland law firm Drummond Woodsum calls the award capricious and says it must be vacated. “To hold otherwise would allow grievance arbitrators to award unbargained-for annual raises to teachers (and) make school budgets unstable and unpredictable.”

The department wants a court hearing on arbitrator John Hanson’s April 8 decision and has filed a proposed order to vacate the award. According to court documents, the department consented to the request from the union’s lawyer, Jonathan Goodman of Troubh Heisler in Portland, for more time to answer the complaint. 

The Wiscasset Newspaper has sought comment from WEA President Heather Sinclair on the department’s court challenge. In a phone interview Friday, Goodman said: “Our position is, the arbitrator got it right.”

Arbitration is meant to give finality and avoid court, so the standard for a court to overturn an award is very high, Goodman said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Asked if he plans to support the proposed hearing or argue for the court to rule based on the filings, Goodman said he is fine either way. “We feel pretty strongly there are not grounds to overturn the (award).”

Reached July 31, Wiscasset Superintendent of Schools Terry Wood said the arbitration hearing was in February at the department’s central office. The issue pre-dated her service so she couldn't speak to its details, Wood explained. Former superintendent Heather Wilmot took part in the hearing, Wood said.

Wood said the contract allows an appeal of an arbitration’s outcome and she supports this appeal. She said the department has not paid teachers the award. It wasn’t budgeted and the department would need to figure out how to fund it, she said in response to questions.

At the Wiscasset Newspaper’s request, Wood provided Hanson’s decision. 

Hanson determined workshop days were locked into the contract and couldn’t change without both parties’ OK. After the state changed the number of required student days due to the October 2017 windstorm and other weather that school year, the school department “took it upon itself to change the number of workshop days to make the result come out to 181 days,” Hanson wrote.