Teachers Ask for Extension to Contract Offer Acceptance Deadline

In order to schedule a vote on it, Saucon Valley teachers are asking for a five-day extension to the deadline to accept the school board’s self-described “bottom line” contract offer, which is Friday.

In a news release issued Friday, chief negotiator for the Saucon Valley Education Association Rich Simononis said logistics are the reason for the last minute request.

“We have over 180 members that need to coordinate their schedules,” he said. “Our members need time to make arrangements for a contract vote.”

He added that the union’s president, Theresa Andreucci, is currently out of state, while he himself is in Hershey with students.

The bottom line contract proposal was made public by the school board on Friday, March 13.

A six-year proposal, it calls for teachers to pay more for healthcare, with monthly premiums increasing to $85 for an individual or $190 for a family plan, as well as a $500 annual deductible for an individual or $1,000 for a family.

The top-level salary under the board’s proposal would be $97,820, and the average full-time salary for the first year of the contract (2012-2013) would retroactively increase to $69,386 under the terms in the offer.

In an article published by the Express-Times Thursday, a dispute between the SVEA and the school board about the percentage amount of annual salary increases was highlighted, as was the board’s unwillingness to negotiate the current proposal any further.

The board is including the annual longevity and continuing education salary increases teachers will receive in its calculation of raises, while Simononis and teachers are calculating them without those increases included, resulting in a difference of several percentage points in many cases.

Simononis cited concerns about the latest offer’s language and criticized the board’s refusal to further negotiate the bottom line offer following a meeting by teachers Wednesday, and he reiterated those complaints in Friday’s news release.

“It is extremely disappointing that the school board refuses to have any communication with the teachers,” he said. “We have attempted to meet with the school board, meet one on one, going through the state mediator, and any other means possible to help bring this contract to a resolution. Sadly, all attempts to communicate have been shut down. Apparently, there are no negotiations, no discussions, no clarifications and no (contract) language reviews, etc.”

The board previously said that if teachers do not accept the bottom line offer by Friday, April 10, its standing offer will revert to an older one that was less generous.

Negotiations have often been contentious since the Saucon Valley teachers’ last contract expired on June 30, 2012, with teachers criticizing the board for being “intellectually dishonest” with taxpayers and at times raising the possibility of a strike, and the board filing an unfair labor practices complaint against the SVEA that alleges that the teachers’ negotiating team engaged in regressive bargaining.

Although a decision has yet to be handed down, a Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board officer described the relationship between the district and its teachers as like “a bad marriage” when he heard the case late last year.

What do you think about the latest developments in the teacher contract dispute in Saucon Valley School District? Should the school board grant teachers an extension to vote on the district’s “bottom line” offer? Tell us in the comments.