{"id":165,"date":"2010-10-01T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unionvilletimes.com\/?p=165"},"modified":"2010-09-30T16:43:44","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T20:43:44","slug":"unionville-teacher-talks-set-to-resume-tuesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=165","title":{"rendered":"Unionville teacher talks set to resume Tuesday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Teachers in the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District show their displeasure at working without a new contract. Contract talks are set to resume Tuesday.<\/p><\/div>\n

No movement as yet by either side, but negotiators express hope for new talks<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/strong>
\nBy Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 A new round of contract talks is slated to start Tuesday morning in the deadlocked negotiations between the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District and its teachers union\u00a0 \u2014 and as yet, neither side has formally responded to the other\u2019s latest contract offer.<\/p>\n

Although neither side has formally rejected the other\u2019s offer, public statements by both sides in recent days make it evident that there remains a wide gap and that neither offer is likely to be embraced.<\/p>\n

After 10 months of talks, the two sides still disagree on the basic frame work of financial talks \u2014 disagreeing about how to even describe the other\u2019s pay and benefits offer.<\/p>\n

Ruthann Waldie, the negotiator for the union, said she reached out to her counterpart, board negotiator Mark Fitzgerald, but the informal chat went no where.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hoping to get us on the same page, be able to make an \u2018apples to apples\u2019 comparison of the numbers,\u201d Waldie said. \u201cBut that really didn\u2019t go anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main bone of contention revolves around how to count par raises related to educational advances and whether to count the big increase in teacher pension contributions in coming years as part of the compensation package.<\/p>\n

Even with a so-called \u201capples to apples\u201d comparison, the two sides are still fairly fair apart \u2014 with the teachers asking for an average increase of 4.9% over the four years of the proposed contract, while the school board is offering an average of 1.8% \u2014 if you take out the pension and education advancement, the teachers argue their proposal asks for 4.3% per year.<\/p>\n

State mediator Richard Stober will again sit in on the talks \u2014 although Waldie suggested this week that he has been ineffective to date \u2014 and taken little time to work with the parties to find common ground. Board sources refute that, suggesting that Stober has been effective, just that the differences between the two sides have been too difficult to bridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite frankly, from the board\u2019s perspective, we have to look at those numbers that way,\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cUltimately, because of those numbers, the teachers are getting a compounding raise and that has to be factored in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the board\u2019s numbers, the two sides are almost $15 million apart over the life of the four-year contract \u2014 a potential problem just in terms of getting a 2010-11 budget done. If as anticipated, the Act I index rate (the maximum rate at which local taxes can be raised by a school board without the budget being sent to referendum) is 1.4% as expected, it could require large cuts to programs \u2014 and possibly teacher layoffs to get under the state-mandated numbers if the new contract adds nearly $4 million to the district\u2019s budget. Even at half that number, sources suggest, which is closer to the numbers being offered by the district, there still might have to be some fairly serious cuts of programs and staff.<\/p>\n

Despite the gulf, both sides seemed to express optimism that progress will be made Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do believe that both sides want a contract,\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that both sides will come to the table ready to make progress.\u201d Waldie offered similar sentiments.<\/p>\n

In addition to the financial issues, there are some issues regarding tuition reimbursement for some categories of education and disagreements about a board proposal to add days to the work year and hours to the work week for teachers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No movement as yet by either side, but negotiators express hope for new talks By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 A new round of contract talks is slated to start Tuesday morning in the deadlocked negotiations between the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District and its teachers union\u00a0 \u2014 and as yet, neither side has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}