August 25, 2005

By Diane Chiddister

Yellow Springs public school teachers returned to school this week laden with the tools of their trade, including pencils, papers, books and computers. But so far they are still lacking one essential item — a new contract for the 2005–06 school year.

While it’s not unprecedented for the teachers union and the school district to still be negotiating teachers’ contracts when the school year begins, it is unusual, according to Shawn Jackson, the president of Yellow Springs Educational Association, which represents 53 teachers from Mills Lawn, McKinney Middle and Yellow Springs High School.

“There’s a lot of concern from the teachers,” he said. “It’s a little disconcerting. It dampens our excitement about coming back to school.”

The union and administrators and the school board held two negotiating sessions this summer, and no settlement was reached, so a third one will take place on Sept. 13, Superintendent Tony Armocida said.

The two sides last negotiated a contract in 2004 and struck a deal on a one-year agreement.

Click on chart for enlarged view.

At issue this year is whether a financially healthy school district should offer pay increases that it can afford now, but which it may not be able to afford in a few years, given expected funding cuts the district is facing, Armocida said.

“We are in a pretty good financial position now, but we can’t just consider the present,” he said. “Whatever solutions we come up with now, we need to protect the long-range health of the district.”

Jackson said the union and school district are at odds in the areas of wages, health benefits and working conditions. “We are fairly far apart on most of those issues,” he said.

Specifically, Jackson said, the union is seeking wage increases that are “something similar” to the 4.25 percent increases received last year by school administrators and the school district staff, which is represented by the Ohio Association of Public School Employees. The administrators and support staff union selected the same pay and benefit package.

Last year, the teachers chose a different offer from the support staff and received 3.5 percent raises. The package also kept health benefit costs at the same rate as the previous year.

At that time, the teachers union and the support staff union were given the choice of the 3.5 percent raise plus maintaining the current health care benefits, or a 4.25 percent raise with a slight increase in health benefit co-pays. The teachers union chose the smaller raise and continued benefits while administrators and the support staff chose the higher raise and increased co-pays.

The co-pays increased for administrators and OAPSE members to $15 for office visits and $8, $15, and $25 for drug prescriptions, as compared to the teachers union rate of $10 co-pays for office visits and $5 and $12 for prescriptions.

Teachers, along with other school district employees, pay 10 percent of their monthly insurance premiums and felt strongly that increased co-pays were unacceptable, Jackson said.

“Our membership was adamant about maintaining the benefits package,” said Jackson, who noted that while young and single teachers may have come out ahead with the higher salaries and increased co-pays, teachers who are more mature and who have families believed they would suffer financially.

The teachers union points to the school district’s financial health — Jackson notes that this year the district carried over a $3.8 million surplus from last year — as evidence that the district can afford to pay teachers the raise that they requested this year.

Treasurer Joy Kitzmiller said that $1.3 million of that surplus was a onetime payment to the school district due to a restructuring of The Antioch Company. However, because of the restructuring, the district no longer receives $291,000 a year in taxes from the company, Armocida said.

“We feel we work hard to provide a quality education to the children,” Jackson said. “We want to reach a contract that recognizes that hard work. We want to negotiate a fair and equitable contract.”

Armocida said that the school district has to be mindful of funding cuts that are expected in the next few years.

The state has notified the district that it faces a 40 percent cut in state funding beginning in 2007, he said. Another expected shortfall is a $500,000 annual loss from a current business tax, which will be phased out in a few years.

In all, Armocida said, the district could face a $1.3 million shortfall by 2010.

“Right now we could settle in the short-term without looking into the future,” he said. “The district needs to decide whether to do what’s easy in the short-term or take a long-term view and use the resources we have to plan for the future.”

But Jackson said that projecting five years into the future is unrealistic.

“From our standpoint projecting beyond one or two years is pretty near impossible,” he said, citing possible changes in state government and legislation, plus possible increases in the Yellow Springs tax base.

“Frankly, we don’t know what’s going to happen then. What we do know is that what we’ve proposed is doable for the district,” he said.

Currently, Yellow Springs teachers’ salaries range from $27,881 for an employee just out of college to $65,702 for a teacher with 28 years or more experience and a master’s degree plus 30 semester hours, according to the school district’s salary schedule. Each year teachers receive a 2.1 percent step increase, regardless of other wage increases, up to their 16th year. After that they receive a step increase at their 20th, 25th and 28th year. Salaries are also based on level of education, with levels ranging from Level I, for a teacher with only a bachelor’s degree, to Level IV, for a teacher with a master’s degree plus 30 semester hours.

For example, a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and 10 years of experience receives a salary of $40,682, while a teacher with a master’s and 15 years of experience receives $56,041.

Entry level salaries for Yellow Springs teachers are low compared to other schools in Greene County, according to Jackson.

However, Armocida said, salaries for local teachers with many years of experience are competitive with other Greene County schools.

Last year, the district’s top administrators received the following salaries: Armocida, $101,206; Kitzmiller, $72,814; Yellow Springs High School Principal John Gudgel, $79,309; and Mills Lawn Principal Christine Hatton, $65,684.

The Board of Education has not yet set administrators’ salaries for this year. The board will address administrator evaluations during an executive session at its meeting Thursday, Aug. 25.