Saucon Valley teachers upset over an ongoing, contentious contract dispute handed out informational flyers, spoke out, and at times lashed out at the school board for what one educator labeled “intellectually dishonest” tactics at the board’s meeting Tuesday evening. Several said they are no longer proud to say they work for the school district, and Saucon Valley Education Association (SVEA) chief negotiator Rich Simononis publicly asked the board to agree to enter binding arbitration in order to reach a contract settlement–something the board declined to do.
More than 50 teachers wearing matching black Saucon polo shirts were in attendance, and six spoke at length during the courtesies of the floor period. Those educators were high school science teacher Andrew Koch, high school math teacher Scott Guidos, vocal music and choral director Chad Miller, business teacher Simononis, high school science teacher Cameron Fowler and counselor Howard Heffelfinger.
Koch, a Lower Saucon Township resident and Saucon Valley native, said he loves teaching at the school but accused the board of manipulating public sympathy through “fear-mongering” about “overly generous raises” that will cause property taxes to go up.
According to the flyer distributed by the SVEA, “the association’s proposal provides absolutely no need for a tax increase.” The association has claimed in the past that the district’s fund balance (financial reserves) of more than $15 million is more than adequate to allow for the raises teachers want, without passing the cost of those increases on to taxpayers.
The board insists, however, that the fund balance is needed to help offset rapidly ballooning teacher pension obligations of districts throughout the state.
On its flyer, the SVEA also cited savings to the district in recent years due to declining teacher payroll and medical payments.
The flyer did not cite specific data or include attributions, and when shared on the Saucon Source Facebook page several readers criticized it as lacking context and background.
For their part, teachers who spoke at the meeting said it is the school board that has been misleading the public–in part, Koch said, through the “incessant blogging” of misinformation.
“It grieves me greatly that myself and my professional colleagues have been painted as…unreasonable and greedy,” he said. “Quite frankly I believe this is intellectually dishonest.”
Guidos said teachers simply want a contract that will allow them to support their families, and added that his personal finances are so tight that when his son recently asked him for a new baseball mitt, he was unsure how he will be able to afford it.
Miller, a Catasauqua native, told the board he may have to leave the district if the association’s contract proposal isn’t accepted, since he was hired to teach at Saucon without reciprocity after eight teaching for eight years in New Jersey and New York.
In essence, he said he had to “start fresh” financially in order to teach at Saucon, because the district told him it wouldn’t recognize his out-of-state experience toward a higher starting salary.
“I stand here in my eleventh year of teaching being paid at Step One,” he said, referring to the base level for longevity pay in teaching.
“I struggle every day to survive financially,” Miller stated. To add insult to injury, he said he has to “go home and hear how awful I am for wanting to be paid for what I do.”
He said the staff at Saucon is “exceptional” and called it the best he’s worked with in his 11-year career. He also said he has greatly expanded the chorus, and “done everything in my power to be the best teacher I have always been.” But the board, with its negotiation tactics, is now “burning the district to the ground,” he claimed.
“I have never been so mistreated in my 11 years,” he said. “It is beyond disrespectful and hurtful.”
For the most part board members sat silently as Miller and the others delivered their remarks, but when Simononis, of Salisbury Township, attempted to utilize a PowerPoint presentation he had created, board president Michael Karabin stopped him from proceeding.
When Simononis questioned why he was being forbidden from using the PowerPoint, Karabin became agitated.
“Excuse me if I get a little emotional, but when my daughters went to this school it was still quality, as it is today, and you try to paint this place as a bad place…well if you feel it’s that bad, we want good people here,” he said.
As he continued, a teacher in the audience stood up and accused him of speaking out of turn. “This is public comment,” the teacher said, to which Karabin responded “and I’m responding to the public comment.”
School board solicitor Mark Fitzgerald then interjected, urging the board not to allow the PowerPoint presentation to be shown, because, he said, doing so would set a bad precedent.
Simononis proceeded to read from a printed copy of his PowerPoint as he addressed the board, and delivered remarks that were highly critical.
“All we’re asking for is a cost of living raise,” he said.
Simononis also castigated the board’s attorney, Jeff Sultanik, who was not at the meeting. In comments made after the meeting, he accused him of “bludgeoning” an earlier SVEA negotiation committee to a point where they “caved” and accepted a state-appointed neutral fact-finder’s recommendations; recommendations that were included in a contract proposal that was ultimately voted down by the union.
“What [the SVEA’s negotiating team] put to the factfinder was unacceptable,” Simononis said. “It was not acceptable to our members.”
Fowler, who graduated from Saucon in 1983 and now lives in Quakertown, also referenced that team in his remarks, saying, “to me…they failed. They did not represent us well.”
The association’s decision to appoint a new negotiating team that put forward a more expensive contract proposal after nearly two years of negotiations with the district is now at the heart of a regressive bargaining allegation the board has leveled against the SVEA. That charge is scheduled to be heard by the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board Nov. 24.
Teachers, meanwhile, recently accused the board of “surface bargaining,” and in an article published by the Express-Times earlier this month SVEA attorney Andrew Muir said if the board fails to bring a substantively different offer to the table soon the association could file an unfair labor practices claim against the district.
Surface bargaining is defined as bargaining without any intention of reaching a settlement.
Board member Charles Bartolet said he thinks “negotiating in public” has been a mistake.
The SVEA began the process in terms of disseminating information to the public by asking for fact-finding last year, which led to a report that was released in “the public domain,” he said.
“I would propose that you pull the lawyers out,” Fowler said in response. “I want to see reasonable minds who have–who are not on anybody’s payroll in that negotiation process working for a mutually acceptable solution that does not have hidden agendas for breaking unions or setting precedents across the state, or any of that other stuff that we get from Jeffrey Sultanik and that we get in the public eye.”
Bartolet said the SVEA’s attorney, Muir, is also part of the problem, but Fowler said he was hired “as a defense” against Sultanik, whom he called “a weapon.”
“To suggest that [Sultanik’s] looking for a precedent-setting contract–that’s not his obligation. He has a professional obligation to the client to obtain a contract and move on, and that’s what his goal is,” Fitzgerald countered.
After the meeting Simononis said there are currently no new negotiation meetings scheduled with the board.
A video of the entire meeting is available for viewing on YouTube, where the school board’s meetings are also live-streamed.
