By Eileen Oldfield Staff Writer
The Board of Education and the Manville Education Association (MEA) will file closing arguments with a the state-appointed fact-finder by June 23, nearly a year after the district’s contract expired.
The negotiations have been stuck on salaries and health insurance co-payments, with the MEA charging the board’s offers aren’t enough to address the district’s turnover of teachers. The MEA wants salary increases close to the 4.54 percent average of recent contracts in the county, while the board had offered an average 3 percent increase. The district is also seeking a change to a health insurance plan with a $30 co-pay for services from the current $10 Point-of-Service co-pay plan.
The fact-finder will compile a report after the MEA and the board submitted reports summarizing their respective positions. The report will contain the fact-finder’s suggestions for a contract. The sides can accept the suggestions or reject them.
”Normally, it takes six weeks after getting both of the briefs,” board President Andrew Zangara said. “Both sides have until the 23 of June. My guess is that both sides would submit before June 23.”
The board and MEA met with the fact-finder May 21 at Roosevelt School, with the board’s Negotiation Committee, Business Administrator and Board Secretary Richard Reilly, District Superintendent Donald Burkhardt, the board’s negotiator, the MEA, and the MEA’s negotiator attending the session.
”Both sides are working on briefs that’s just the formal documents outlining each position,” Kathy Coulibaly, NJEA spokes woman said. “They’re going to await the fact-finder’s report.”
Both Mr. Zangara and Ms. Coulibaly said the formal report would be issued during the summer, approximately a month after each side submits briefs.
The fact-finding session followed the MEA’s alleged problems obtaining Board of Education documents, including a copy of the district budget, the Board Secretary’s report, and a copy of the district’s audit report.
The MEA obtained the documents with a subpoena, Ms. Coulibaly said.
Board Administrator Richard Reilly maintains that the documents were available at the board offices, though the MEA needed to fill out state-required paperwork to obtain the documents. Obtaining the documents came with a state-required fee, to cover copying the often multi-page papers.
”The documents were available,” Mr. Reilly said. “They neglected to fill out the Open Public Records forms. It was always available to them; they just neglected to fill out the forms.”
Ms. Coulibaly did not comment on the document availability, though she did not know of any similar incidents.
