Frustrated at the lack of progress in contract negotiations and unhappy at what they consider to be unfair comparisons to other school districts, Hopewell Township teachers lashed out at school district officials at a recent school board meeting.
The 400-plus members of the Hopewell Valley Education Association have been working without a contract since June 30, 2018. The union represents teachers, child study team members, guidance counselors and athletic trainers.
After five meetings between the negotiation teams representing the Hopewell Valley Education Association and the Hopewell Valley Regional School District Board of Education, the two sides are going to meet with a state-appointed fact-finder on Jan. 9 to try to reach an agreement.
The delay in meeting with the fact-finder and a recent newspaper article comparing the amount of teaching time and teachers’ salaries between the Hopewell Valley Regional School District and neighboring school districts drew sharp criticism from several teachers at the school board’s Dec. 10 meeting.
Hopewell Valley Central High School teacher Paul Tkacs objected to the comparison of teaching time and salaries between Hopewell Valley Central High School, Lawrence High School, Princeton High School and Hightstown High School.
Tkacs said the article states that Hopewell high school teachers have 225 minutes of “instructional time” with students daily and teachers in the other high schools have 300 minutes of contact time – but the discrepancy can be attributed to how instructional time is defined.
In the Hopewell Valley Regional School District, instructional time is the number of classroom minutes. But in other districts, it includes time spent with students outside of the classroom, Tkacs said, pointing out that Hopewell school district officials did not make that distinction.
Using the median teacher salary, it makes it appear that Hopewell Valley Regional School District teachers are better paid than their counterparts in neighboring school districts, such as the Princeton Public Schools, Tkacs said.
The median teacher salary in the Hopewell Valley Regional School District is $82,152. The median salary in the Princeton Public Schools is $81,583; $70,480 in the East Windsor Regional School District; and $64,386 in the Lawrence Township Public Schools, according to the New Jersey Department of Education.
The median salary is the mid-point of salaries – half of Hopewell Valley Regional School District teachers are earning more, and half are earning less. The average salary is the total amount of money paid in teacher salaries, divided by the number of teachers.
In fact, a teacher in the Princeton Public Schools who is at the top of the salary guide or scale earns $16,000 more per year than a teacher who is at the top of the salary guide in the Hopewell Valley Regional school District, he said.
The school board has misconstrued the contract language to fit its narrative and to give the impression that Hopewell Valley Regional School District teachers are under-worked and overpaid, Tkacs said.
“On Jan. 9, the fact-finder will weigh the facts – not some cheap narrative designed to denigrate our contributions to the community,” Tkacs said.
Lesley Salvato, who teaches at the Stony Brook Elementary School, said “the new normal” is for teachers to begin each school year without any guarantees about their income. She said she does not know of any other profession that would expect employees to commit to a job without knowing about income and benefits.
Salvato said the students are succeeding academically and the school district’s reputation is improving, “but somehow our pay goes down and our health insurance goes up.” There does not appear to be an urgency to solve the problem, she said.
Waiting for the fact-finder to meet in January feels “dismissive,” she said.
Heidi Olson, a past president of the Hopewell Valley Education Association, urged the school board to go back to the “Hopewell way” – to be respectful and work in collaboration with the employees.
“That’s not a lot to ask,” said Olson, who teaches at the Hopewell Elementary School.
School board president Alyce Murray agreed that the “Hopewell way” is to be collaborative.
But the decision to go to fact-finding – as well as the date chosen for the session – was not made by the school board, Murray said. It is part of the process, because the two sides could not reach an agreement.
The fact-finder will meet with the teachers union and the school board, prepare a report and “reach a very fair and equitable settlement” for both sides, Murray said. She said that she hopes it will happen as soon as possible.
When Murray asked Assistant Superintendent Anthony Suozzo to “get to the bottom” of the comparison of salaries and instructional time between the Hopewell Valley and Princeton school districts, he replied that the information came from the Princeton Public Schools contract.
School board members also pointed out that the information regarding teachers’ median salary is available on the New Jersey Department of Education’s website, and it shows that Hopewell Valley Regional School District teachers have the highest median salary in Mercer County.