BR teachers move strike date

BY STACI WILSON

After some movement toward a settlement in the contract dispute, the Blue Ridge Education Association moved its planned strike date from Tuesday, March 29 to Monday, April 25.

But the school board is pushing back. Following the March 17 negotiation session between the district and the association, Board President Chris Lewis issued a notice that if the BREA did not accept the offer on the table on March 28, the district would remove retroactive pay of any kind for the 2014-15 school year.

Blue Ridge teachers have been working without a contract for over two years.

PSEA representative James Maria said the big dollar items of salary and health care drove the need for the teachers to issue a strike notice. But, he said, there are other language issues in the proposed contract that BREA finds “unacceptable,” he said.

In the letter sent to local media outlets and published on the district website about the March 17 negotiations, Lewis said the board had expected an offer from BREA in response to the counter proposal from the board put forth earlier this month. “…that offer never came,” Lewis wrote.

“Instead we were once again told that our salary offers were too low and that the Board needed to “fix” the 10% contribution rate required by the teachers. The District was also once again accused of wrong doing in terms of how much the BREA members contribute to their healthcare,” Lewis said.

Maria said the teachers are willing to contribute to their health care at the same level they contribute now but there is a “remarkable issue with the way the district calculates the premium share in which the teachers are charged.”

Maria said the BREA is looking for a “reasonable a fair calculation of the premium that’s not based on a fictitious premium but some other metric.”
“We don’t have faith in the fidelity of their calculations,” Maria said. “We believe they have charged too much.”

“The important part,” Maria said, “is BREA does not object to contributing – just to how it’s being calculated.”

Salaries are also at issue, according to Maria.

He said the BREA needs a commitment from the district to move teachers through the salary step schedule in order to keep wages competitive with other districts, expenses and inflation.

According to the letter from the board, the board moved from its flat offer of a $250 payment to teachers for the 2014-15 school year to a full step movement on the salary matrix that would have amounted to a value of nearly $50,000 for the teachers’ union, as opposed to the $21,500 cost of the flat check. “But in an all too familiar response from the BREA, it still was not good enough,” Lewis wrote.

BREA is expected to present a counter-proposal at the scheduled March 28 negotiation session. The board has set that date as the deadline to accept the current contract offer or the district will remove retroactive pay of any kind for the 2014-15 school year.

From the letter: “The School Board will no longer allow the BREA to hold the District and its students’ hostage under the threat of a strike without consequences to their actions.”

Maria said, “In all honesty, when you look at an offer with a expiration date, if it included any real merit the offer should stand by itself. It implies a need for a threat for people to take it seriously.”

At the March 17 negotiating session, Maria said there was assurance from the district the teachers would move on the salary schedule. “That was done in a cooperative way,” he said. “Now (BREA) is being coerced to accept that (by March 28).”

In the board’s latest letter to the public, Maria said the teachers were accused of delaying negotiations. “I can’t imagine any evidence could support that,” he said. “That’s the reason a strike notice was issued – we were tired of the delay and would like the district to settle the contract.”

And because of progress made at the March 17 session, the Association chose to move the strike date. “The board was unhappy we didn’t rescind the strike in its entirety,” Maria said.

“We don’t go on strike lightly,” Maria said. “That’s the last thing anyone in the district wants.”

The Montrose Education Association is still set to strike on Tuesday, March 29. Maria said a negotiation session in planned for Wednesday, March 23, in that district.