WEST SPRINGFIELD – School Committee members heard from two new principals on May 10, meeting next year’s Coburn School Principal David Drugan, and incoming John Ashley School Principal Suzanne Tetrault.

Drugan has 15 years’ experience as a school principal, and is currently the principal at Bowe Elementary School in Chicopee.

A West Springfield graduate and resident of town, Drugan said he is excited to be “coming back to my hometown.” He said he is familiar with the challenges of education in a school like Coburn, which serves a diverse population in the downtown and Merrick areas.

Bowe’s student population is 75 percent from low-income households and 24 percent English learners, Drugan said.

Tetrault, a Wilbraham resident, is currently the student services director for the public schools in Monson, and principal of that town’s early childhood center, Quarry Hill Community School, which has classrooms for preschool and kindergarten. She said she is eager to take on a role that lets her focus on being a principal.

“I have really explored play-based learning” at Quarry Hill, she said after the meeting. Tetrault said she’s already met with some of the teachers at John Ashley, and their “philosophy aligned with mine.”

John Ashley is West Springfield’s kindergarten center, with classrooms in that grade only. Currently, kindergartners from all West Springfield neighborhoods attend John Ashley. Next year, that will change, as the new Coburn School includes room to handle that neighborhood’s kindergartners. Plans are also in the works to build kindergarten classrooms at Memorial School. School officials have said the long-term goal is to have kindergarten integrated in to all of the town’s elementary schools.

Pay hike for subs

Substitute teachers will receive pay hikes ranging from 8 percent to 32 percent next fall, following a West Springfield School Committee vote on May 10. School Business Manager Kim Hunter said the new rates will help the schools compete for workers and bring the lower end of the scale up to the state’s minimum hourly wage.

Not only will the pay rates for the 2022-23 school year increase, but rates for future years will rise automatically at the same rate as entry-level teachers, as they are now defined as a percentage of a new full-time teacher’s daily wage.

Day-to-day substitute teachers without a bachelor’s degree, currently paid $85 per day, will next year earn $92 a day, or 35 percent of the wage for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree. Those with a bachelor’s degree will rise from $90 a day to $119 a day, or 45 percent. Substitutes with teaching certificates, or retired certified teachers, will see their pay rise from $110 per day to $145, or 55 percent.

Following the increases in teacher salaries agreed to in the current union contract, those figures will increase by a few dollars each year, reaching $97, $125 and $153, respectively, in the 2024-25 school year.

The School Committee also increased rates for floating substitutes, from $110 per day to $119 (45 percent) for those without a teaching certificate, and from $115 per day to $145 (55 percent) for those with one. Substitutes who stay with the same classroom for more than 10 days will see their daily pay rates rise from $90 to $119 (45 percent) for those with an associate’s degree; $100 to $132 with a bachelor’s degree (50 percent); and $130 to $145 for certified or retired teachers.