It will be at least six to eight weeks before the negotiating teams for the Hopewell Valley Regional School District Board of Education and the Hopewell Valley Education Association will learn what a state-appointed fact-finder has recommended in an effort to forge a new contract between them.
The two sides met with the fact-finder for more than four hours in early January to try to hammer out a new contract – and while some progress was made, “ultimately, all of the necessary issues could not be agreed upon,” school board president Alyce Murray said at the school board’s Jan. 14 meeting.
A mediator initially was called in to help the negotiating teams for the school board and the teachers union to work out a contract to replace the one that expired June 30, 2018 when the two sides could not come to agreeable terms.
When the mediator could not overcome the impasse, the school board and the teachers union resorted to a state-appointed fact-finder who was named by the state Public Employment Relations Commission. The fact-finder, like the mediator, is a neutral party who tries to resolve contract disagreements.
Murray said the options are to wait out the two-month period and receive the fact-finder’s recommendations, or to continue to schedule discussions with the Hopewell Valley Education Association to gauge movement on the issues – salary, health insurance and teaching time – that are holding up the contract.
“To be clear, the school board has every intention to meet with the Hopewell Valley Education Association at any mutually agreed upon time or day to come to a resolution on the contract. But until such time, the teachers will work under the salary and benefits of their last contract,” Murray said.
The fact-finder met with school board and teachers union representatives on Jan. 9 to review the records of the mediation. The fact-finder’s report, which will be issued in six to eight weeks, will contain a set of non-binding recommendations for a settlement.
The unresolved contract issues include salary and payments toward health insurance premiums, and teaching time – the number of minutes that a teacher must spend in front of students.
Union members pay as much as 35 percent of the cost of their health insurance premiums. They have said they are taking home less money as compared to four years ago, because of the increased payment toward the health insurance premium.
School district administrators would like to increase teaching time from its current 225 minutes daily. They pointed to the 300 minutes per day that high school teachers must teach at Princeton, Lawrence and Hightstown high schools, although the Hopewell Valley teachers union disputes those numbers.