WEST WARWICK — The School Department has run out of money and cannot afford to issue two of the five biweekly paychecks that are due the town’s hundreds of teachers in accrued summer wages –– an apparent violation of state law.

Under the current contract with the 355-member West Warwick Teachers Alliance, teachers receive 26 biweekly paychecks annually. Paychecks covering the summer weeks are considered accrued — or already earned –– wages and were scheduled to be paid in a lump sum Thursday. “We will be out of money. We told the court we are going to be short $3.3 million. This is no mystery,” School Committee lawyer David Lussier said Tuesday.

Lussier said Michael Petrarca, director of finance for the School Department, is preparing a list of all vendors and other creditors the schools will not be able to pay by June 30, when the fiscal year closes.

“Mr. Petrarca is trying to come up with the money to pay the teachers. The bottom line is the people need to know … the town is going to have to pay this through litigation,” Lussier said.

Teachers union president Donald Vanasse said when he was informed last month that the School Department was unlikely to make the full summer payroll, he filed a written complaint to the Department of Labor and Training.

Vanasse asserted that the lapse would violate numerous state laws regarding payment of wages and would disrupt payment of federal and state withholding taxes, FICA payments, annuity payments and union dues. . Earlier this year, the union renegotiated the current contract and had agreed to a freeze on wage increases for the coming fiscal year.

“We have alerted the DLT that there is a looming problem. Our individual teachers are going to be filing complaints,” Vanasse said. “This is a serious matter. Nobody seems to be getting upset about it. They [the Town Council] think it’s not their problem. The union’s concern is that the members get exactly what they bargained for. We’ve made concessions. We’ve taken a pay cut.”

Elaine Heiss, a standards examiner for the Department of Labor and Training, agreed with Vanasse that the action would violate state law.

In a June 1 letter to West Warwick Schools Supt. Kenneth Sheehan, Heiss warned that “it is against Rhode Island General Laws to withhold wages/vacation pay, and anything that is accrued becomes part of wages owed.”

If the School Department has been found in violation, she told the superintendent, beyond making the teachers whole it would have to pay a 25 percent “administration fee” on each overdue payment.

Vanasse places part of the blame on the town for not appropriating the necessary money to run the School Department and forcing a lawsuit, a so-called Caruolo action, in which the schools are seeking an additional $3.3 million in local tax dollars. Lussier, the School Department lawyer, said the School Committee requested a supplemental tax in December to raise extra money for the schools, but the Town Council never responded.

(The Caruolo hearings, under way in Superior Court, will resume July 1.)

Petrarca, the schools’ finance director, School Committee Chairwoman Lindagay Palazzo, and other school officials could not be reached for additional comment.

Town Manager James Thomas said the town has given the schools the entire $49.2 million appropriation that voters approved at the Financial Town Meeting in May of 2008. “I have been telling them since 2008 that it was going to be a problem and no one would listen to me.” Thomas said. “It’s not our fault. If there is any fiscal mismanagement that rests solely on the shoulders of the superintendent and the business manager, not this administration, not the Town Council and not the residents of West Warwick.”

lsparks@projo.com