The Board of Education has turned down the Millstone Township Education Association (MTEA)’s offer to change the terms of their recently negotiated contract settlement.
MTEA leadership said that members voluntarily agreed to change the terms of the contract they settled shortly before March 17 when the district found out that it would lose 29.5 percent in state aid. At the time of the MTEA contract negotiations, the district was anticipating a maximum decrease in state aid of 15 percent.
According to MTEA leadership, members would have agreed to a zero percent salary increase this year, losing a step on the salary guide, and paying 15 percent of their dependents’ health care coverage. Teachers and bus drivers would have also agreed to receiving a 3.75 percent salary raise in the second year of the contract, a 3 percent raise in the first five months of the third year, and an additional 3.25 percent raise for the next five months of the third year of the contract. The MTEA also offered to give back professional day reimbursement to save the district $130,000 and to change health care providers to save $300,000. MTEA leadership said the Board of Education has rejected this offer.
Board of Education President Tom Foley said the negotiated contract does not provide a salary increase to MTEA members this year. He said the contract would increase MTEA member salaries 6 percent in the second year and 4.25 percent in the third year. Foley also said that all district employees had to move to the state health care plan for the 2010-11 school year, which saved the district $300,000.
According to Foley, the MTEA’s recent offer also included asking for a $2,000 increase per teacher above step 15 of the salary guide, which would cost the district an additional $80,000 each year. According to Foley, the MTEA offer would have saved $100,000 in salary increases and would have provided a $130,000 one-time giveback. The district would have saved a total of $150,000 with the proposal, as it included the $80,000 salary guide increase, he said, which amounts to saving two teaching positions next year.
“The board is looking for long-term resolution not short-term fixes,” he said. “We’re not the state, where we defer the problem to the next year to let someone else address it.”
Addressing MTEA leaders Arlene Agulnick and Irene Pierson, Foley said the Board of Education wants to work with the MTEA to save jobs and be fiscally responsible to residents.
“This budget problem isn’t your fault or the board’s fault,” he said. “It is driven by entities neither of us control and an economy that has faltered and is struggling in its recovery. If the MTEA is interested in saving jobs of your membership in a fiscally sound manner, we’re interested in talking.”
Foley alleged that the MTEA proposal would ultimately result in the district spending over the anticipated budget caps,
and would have resulted third year of such a contract. He also said that offering one-year givebacks does little to establish a long-term resolution to the financial crisis in the town, state and country.
“As we’ve stated publicly in the past, the financial model for public education in the state of New Jersey is broken and has been for years,” Foley said.