Westbrook School Superintendent Stan Sawyer retired last Wednesday just before he was rehired by the school committee to work another year and see the construction of the city’s new middle school through.

While that sequence of events might seem strange, it makes perfect sense for Sawyer and the other public employees who have taken advantage of the Maine State Retirement System, which allows them to retire, begin collecting their pensions and stay in the same job.

While we can’t blame Sawyer doing something that’s perfectly legal and makes financial sense for him, we can take issue with the system and the school board that allow it. Public employees should not be allowed to retire, begin collecting their pensions and return immediately to some of the most high- paying jobs in the public sector.

Sawyer isn’t the first person in Westbrook to do this. Police Chief Paul McCarthy once retired as a captain in the police department so that he could begin collecting his pension and was then rehired as a deputy chief.

After McCarthy did it, other members of the police department asked to do the same thing, and the city wouldn’t let them, begging the question: Why was it all right for McCarthy but not for other members of the department?

Westbrook Human Resources Director Tina Crellin said this week the city doesn’t allow employees to retire and keep their jobs because it’s considered to be a bad personnel policy. She said it created problems for the city when McCarthy did it because many other employees wanted to do the same thing.

That gets at one of the basic problems behind the practice: Everyone can’t do it. Even if the Maine State Retirement System could afford to make the payments, it would make a mockery of its pension system, which, by definition, is supposed to pay employees after they retire from their jobs.

In Sawyer’s case, members of the school board who supported rehiring him last week expressed their appreciation for his willingness to stay on through the next year, because it will be such a crucial time for the school district. The superintendent will have to lead the district as it navigates the state’s new school consolidation law. Westbrook is also beginning work on the city’s new middle school.

Sawyer’s familiarity with the school district and the school construction project will definitely be assets in the coming year. It will also be useful to hear his advice as the schools hire his successor.

However, that doesn’t explain why he needed to “retire” and begin collecting his pension to stay.

The school district had a contract with Sawyer that didn’t expire until June 2008. Why didn’t he continue working under the compensation he had been receiving and begin collecting his pension when he was truly in retirement? And, if he was interested in retiring this year, the school board members should have started the process of looking for his successor long ago. Now, in a difficult year ahead, they have to do that, too.

Brendan Moran, editor