A Saucon Valley School Board meeting that began on a positive note Tuesday night–with the announcement of student-athletes’ achievements and the naming of a new assistant school district superintendent–took a turn when the district’s unresolved teacher contract dispute came up during the meeting’s public comment period.
Saucon Valley Education Association president Theresa Andreucci broached the subject from the floor, asking the board to withdraw an unfair labor practice complaint against the SVEA that’s currently under review by state officials.
An initial hearing before a Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board officer in Harrisburg last week was “of great concern,” Andreucci said, in part because the officer said it could take him up to three years to render a decision.
“Quite frankly, the association does not have unlimited resources or funds to continue to go back to Harrisburg to three years,” she said.
“I’m asking you all this evening: Will you withdraw this unfair labor practice charge and get back to the bargaining table?” Andreucci continued. “So we can get back to what we’re all here for: educating the students of the Saucon Valley and being the best that we can be.”
Board solicitor Mark Fitzgerald responded to Andreucci’s question by telling her the board’s decision would depend on whether teachers would be willing to reverse themselves and return to the point in the negotiations before they voted to reject an offer prepared based on a state-appointed neutral fact-finder’s recommendations.
The board has charged that the SVEA engaged in regressive bargaining–an unfair labor practice in Pennsylvania–by making less favorable offers over time.
“We need to bring a contract—a proposal—to our membership that they’re going to sign,” Andreucci countered.
SVEA chief negotiator Rich Simononis also addressed the board Tuesday, and urged the members of its negotiating team to return to the bargaining table.
“We are trying everything possible to try and come to an agreement,” he said. “There has been no negotiations for the past eight months. I can’t even imply to you how frustrating that is.”
Simononis said that due to the stalemate, “you have people breaking down in school.”
And he questioned why he was required to use a personal day to attend the hearing in Harrisburg last week.
Fitzgerald told him it was because he wasn’t under subpoena to appear at the hearing, in which case the absence would have been considered a professional day.
After Simononis spoke, a Lower Saucon Township resident, Shawn Sefranek, told the board he wants it to hold firm in the contract dispute.
“Don’t give in to these people. Their demands are excessive,” he said of the teachers.
Sefranek also called Simononis–who makes about $93,000 per year and would receive a smaller raise under the board’s current proposal than teachers near the bottom of the pay scale–“one of the problems.”
“He wants a bigger raise,” Sefranek theorized.
His argument prompted a prolonged outburst from an unidentified woman in the audience, who was told by board members that she was speaking out of turn.
As for health care, Sefranek said he pays $389 a month for a family plan and makes less than Simononis.
The cost for a teacher’s family plan under the district’s current health care contract is $95 a month, the board confirmed at Tuesday’s meeting.
School board members have said that if teachers don’t voluntarily agree to pay a larger portion of their health care costs under a new contract, the district will be hit with an excise tax by the federal government, since the current plan is classified as “Cadillac” health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).
School board member Bryan Eichfeld said he’s also frustrated about the stalemate, but sees the ball as being in the teachers’ court.
“We negotiated for 2.5 years. We moved. You moved. And the teachers didn’t accept it. Then you went way over to this point that you’re at, and there hasn’t been significant changes,” he said to the teachers at the meeting. “You’re still asking (for) retro pay all the way to the beginning, when the rest of the district didn’t get pay.”
“You’ve moved your percent, your COLA down, but we need to control all three (components of teacher raises),” he added. Those components include the cost of living adjustment (COLA), step movements that reward years of service and column movements that compensate teachers for continued graduate study.
Eichfeld also said that teachers shouldn’t feel like their work is unappreciated, just because of the current dispute.
“I feel bad that the teachers feel that we don’t appreciate them, because that’s not the case,” he said.
Board member Susan Baxter agreed.
“We would like a contract settlement as much as you would, and we do appreciate the teachers in the district,” she said.
Testimony in the unfair labor practice hearing that began Nov. 24 is expected to resume in Harrisburg at 10 a.m. on Dec. 17.
Teachers in Saucon Valley have been working without a contract since June 30, 2012, and negotiations between teachers and the school board have been ongoing since January 2012.
Currently there are no new negotiation sessions scheduled.
To watch a video of Tuesday night’s meeting on YouTube, click here.
