By JON BAKER

CENTRAL FALLS — For eight years now, Mary Coyle has been considered a rather solid first-grade teacher's assistant at Ella Risk Elementary School. That all came to a screeching halt during an orientation session on Aug. 31, when she discovered the Central Falls School District's powers-that-be had issued her a pink slip.

To help make her personal financial ends meet, she accepted a position as librarian and secretary at the Calcutt Middle School.
“I had to take a pay cut,” she said. “It comes out to be about 70 cents an hour. There's been a lot of displacing of teacher assistants.”
That's why Coyle and about 50 others representing Local 1627 of the Rhode Island Council 94/AFSCME chose to demonstrate on the sidewalks bordering the high school at 5:30 p.m., Tuesday. They wanted to raise their collective voice against the school board, not to mention School Superintendent Frances Gallo.
Dressed in bright green T-shirts with white lettering reading “Council 94/AFSCME,” the picketers carried signs with multiple messages for the school board prior to a meeting held inside the secondary school, located at 24 Summer St.
Union officials stated the event was held as “informational picketing, to shed light on the school administration's contract violations, lack of respect for the workers and the seriously deteriorating labor/management relationship.
“We have a lot of grievances about the seniority of teacher assistants being overlooked,” said John Burns, the business agent for Council 94/AFSCME. “This is all about the school department not allowing those who have received pink slips to bump one-on-one teacher assistants who haven't been there as long. That's the main issue.
“The contract is pretty clear,” he added. “It states that these particular teachers' assistants are able to bump those with less seniority, and it's just not happening. It's been an ongoing case – an ongoing problem – for over a month now, and it concerns teacher assistants at a lot of Central Falls schools. We want Supt. Gallo to support and honor the contract.”
Those in the picket lines included Council 94 President Michael Downey, Vice President Beverly Ellis and numerous teachers and friends of those half-dozen employees affected.
“The contract says that when we're displaced, we can bump others according to seniority, but we're not being allowed to, and I don't know why,” Coyle said. “I'm OK with where I'm at at Calcutt; I just feel bad for the people who have had to take jobs in which they don't feel comfortable.
Added Maria Gomes, a first-grade teacher's assistant at Veterans Elementary School: “Mary is high up there on the list (with most seniority), so she should be able to bump, but it doesn't matter. It hasn't happened, and we're not happy about it.”
According to Gomes, Local 1627 represents not only those teacher assistants but also custodians, bus drivers and monitors, secretaries and the like.
When the picketing ended at about 6:15 p.m., several demonstrators trekked off to their cars, parked blocks away. Still others stayed put to discuss their problems, while a few strode inside to address school administrators as a sudden rainstorm hit the city.