After more than one year of negotiations between the Millstone school board and Millstone Township Education Association, it is understandable that the community’s nerves have begun to fray.
The township’s teachers, bus drivers and support staff — who are represented by the MTEA — and school board officials probably reached the point of frustration many parents have expressed recently long ago.
With the days left in the school year numbered, the board and union both need to make a good-faith effort to sign a contract and settle this dispute before students and staff walk out the door for summer vacation.
For six weeks, both the board and union, not to mention parents, have anxiously awaited a report from a fact finder appointed by the state Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC). That report, which makes recommendations for a settlement, arrived Monday.
At press time on Tuesday, the specifics of the report had not yet been made public. Officials said that the report will be posted on the district’s Web site on Saturday for public consumption after the five-day review period required by PERC expires.
Since the fact finder is an independent third party not affiliated with either the school board or the union, a reasonable person would expect that the report contains recommendations for a settlement, which fall somewhere between what the board wants and what the union wants.
Board officials said Monday that the report represents more than they were willing to give, but they expect to accept its recommendations. Union officials said they felt the report needed to "fine-tuning."
Hopefully, the problems the MTEA is referring to are minor and can be resolved quickly. If not, both sides need to keep in mind that compromise is key and will work out their issues as expeditiously as possible.
As with any contract, last-minute hair splitting over language and minor items is to be expected. However, this should not stop the board and union from putting the major framework of an agreement in place. Hopefully they started at their scheduled meeting on Tuesday.
In the interest of healing the wounds the community is nursing from the strife in the school district, we hope the union and board are able to stop bleeding and at least lay the foundation of an agreement before this newspaper hits the streets on Thursday.