The Neshaminy School District and its teachers union are
set to begin negotiations.
The two sides will attempt to hammer out a new deal
beginning this month for the more than 600 teachers in the Neshaminy Federation
of Teachers organization. They have about six months to get the job done before
the current contract expires July 1. That deal took five years of talks,
shouting and a teachers’ work-to-contract action.
This time, different people are in charge on both sides.
Board President Ritchie Webb stepped down in 2013 and was replaced at the helm
by Scott Congdon. Tara Huber, an English teacher at Neshaminy High School and
adviser to The Playwickian, the school newspaper, heads the teachers union. She
was elected after longtime union head Louise Boyd stepped down last year.
Huber aims to make things different this time around.
“We’re looking forward to a quick and amicable
negotiation with a settlement that we can say is good for students and fair and
equitable to all educators,” she said. “We want to work with the district in a
positive way to get this settled.”
Chris Stanley, the district spokesman, said both sides
are working out scheduling the first negotiation session. Ellis Katz, the
district’s labor attorney, said the plans are for the first talks to start this
month. Both sides are in preliminary stages, so it’s too soon to tell how the
negotiations will go.
The two sides reached a deal on a retroactive seven-year
agreement in June 2013 after the five years of contentious talks. During that
time, teachers participated in work-to-contract actions, skipping back to school
nights and other measures.
The negotiations also spilled out into board meetings,
with teachers, residents and board members talking about each offer and
counteroffer.
The deal reached contained many concessions by the
teachers, including a change in their health care plan, a lengthened workday,
mandatory back-to-school nights and more.
Superintendent Robert Copeland, who came to the district
in the midst of the negotiations in 2012, credited the more than $1 million in
savings from the health care changes for the district’s ability to start a
full-day kindergarten program.
When Huber took over the union last year, she and other
leaders said they wanted to keep the negotiations from turning ugly this time.
“It’s my goal to keep the lines of communication open, to
keep dialogue always professional and respectful,” she said in July.
Congdon and Copeland both want to keep the talks
productive going forward.
Source: Bucks
County Courier Times
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