Mediator returning to negotiation table
Middletown school board, MTEA go to binding arbitration on health insurance
With wounds from the Middletown school district’s second strike in three years still raw nearly four months after students and teachers returned to the classrooms, a settlement between the Board of Education and the union remains elusive.
The board and the Middletown Township Education Association (MTEA) have agreed to enter binding arbitration on one of the two remaining roadblocks standing in the way of a settlement.
The MTEA has agreed to the board’s request that the health insurance contribution issue be sent to binding arbitration, but balked at the board’s proposal that the salary guide distribution also be subject to the same process at this time.
Instead, the MTEA proposed that salary guide distribution, which determines how raises are allocated among the ranks of the teachers, be determined through mediation or nonbinding arbitration.
"Their position is certainly inconsistent," said Schools Superintendent Jack DeTalvo. "It is hard to understand why the question of salary guide distribution should be treated differently."
In a statement released by the MTEA last week, the union has not rejected the idea of adding the salary guides to binding arbitration at a later date if necessary.
In December, the board rejected binding arbitration after the MTEA proposed that all the issues enter binding arbitration in an attempt to bring an end to last year’s seven-day strike, during which more than 200 MTEA members spent time in jail for violating a court order to return to work.
Ronald J. Riccio, who served as the court-appointed mediator whose recommendations for settlement were accepted by the board and the union earlier this year, will serve as the arbitrator for the health insurance issue.
Board Attorney Malachi J. Kenney said that the board was able to submit to binding arbitration because the overall amounts for salary increases and health insurance contributions were fixed when both parties accepted Riccio’s report.
"The issues do not have budgetary impact, which is why the board is willing to submit them to binding arbitration," said Kenney.
According to Kenney, Riccio will have "conventional authority," which will allow him to make a recommendation that falls somewhere between the proposal of the board and that of the MTEA.
Kenney said that board favors a three-tiered health insurance structure with higher rates for higher paid employees. The union has said it favors a system in which how much employees pay would be determined by the level of coverage selected.
On the issue of salary guides, both sides remain far apart.
In a March 22 press statement, the union says the health insurance contribution question should be decided first, since that "has a direct impact on all MTEA members’ economic situation."
"The board’s approach to the salary guides is one that is designed to pit member against member to reach their goal. To take money from veteran staff … is unacceptable," the statement continues.
"To tell all veteran staff, who devoted their careers to this community, that they must bear the burden of correcting the [salary] guide would never be accepted in any other district or any other profession."
Kenney said that the board is advocating a salary guide distribution that favors large increases for lower paid teachers, especially those on the middle steps of the salary guide.
"Middletown is competitive at the starting steps of the salary guide and at the top, but the middle steps are comparatively low," said Kenney.
DeTalvo said that the imbalance in the salary guide makes it more difficult for the district to recruit new teachers.
According to school board officials, binding arbitration would help bring the negotiations to a conclusion.
"The lack of closure for these negotiations has made it very difficult for the school district to move forward from last fall’s strike," said Kenney. "The board very strongly believes that it is time, or well past time, to allow the healing process to begin."
Parents and teachers also agree that the longer the district and the union lack a settlement, the longer animosity from December’s strike will remain alive and well.
"Most disturbing and confusing to MTEA members is — and has been — the lack of community outrage during the incarceration of 228 teachers and secretaries," the MTEA statement says.
"We agree that great harm has been done — but that harm was also done to the teachers and secretaries of this district. We — like the children and parents — have been wounded. We also suffer from terrible emotional damage.
"We come to work each day and wonder how so many of our colleagues could have been jailed — and while the cries of condemnation were heard around the world — there was silence in our own community."
A letter signed by 18 educational and parent organizations from schools throughout the district to the board and the MTEA called for an immediate end to the labor dispute and for both parties to submit all remaining issues to binding arbitration last week.
"The continuation of this protracted negotiation is clearly detrimental to the positive learning environment our schools have always enjoyed and cannot be tolerated. This bitter, sustained disagreement must come to an end before our entire educational system is damaged beyond repair," the March 21 letter stated.