Rochester Teachers May Collect Back Pay ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) - About a third of the Rochester City School District's teachers may collect back pay starting next month under an agreement between the district and the Rochester Teachers' Association union.

The RTA says it had an agreement with the district dating from 2001 under which teachers who earned a masters degree after being hired would get an automatic pay raise. The district argued for years that there was no such agreement.

District Chief of Human Capital Initiatives Michele Hancock says the district now will start making the extra payments to teachers in October. She says they're working with the RTA on the details.

The district may have to pay a million dollars or more in back pay to teachers. The agreement affects about a thousand of the district's 36-hundred teachers.

Hancock says teachers who already have a masters degree get the extra step automatically when they're hired. But she says teachers who earn a masters need to send the district a transcript confirming it, and that has been part of the confusion.

The union and the district have been arguing over the issue since 2001. But Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard says he decided to resolve it when he came on the job in January. He says it's an issue that "didn't move forward as it should have." © Copyright 2009, WXXI