N. Merrick school district freezes salaries

Teachers and administrators in the North Merrick School District have agreed to voluntarily forgo their raises in the 2011-12 academic year, saving the district $350,000.

The move follows an earlier decision by Bellmore-Merrick School Central High School District teachers and administrators to do without raises next year in order to preserve teaching positions.

With the salary freeze, the North Merrick district guaranteed that there would be no faculty layoffs in 2011-12. After the freeze, North Merrick’s proposed budget now stands at $26.8 million, which includes a 2.11 percent increase in expenditures over the current year. The budget will be presented next month before the public votes on it in May.

Superintendent David Feller said, “Our teachers and administrators, in recognition of what is so unique about North Merrick, and in their desire to do what they can to maintain all that is special here, have taken the unprecedented step of not taking their raise for next year. This sacrifice is greatly appreciated by this Board of Education, superintendent of schools and hopefully our community as a whole.”

The initial proposal to freeze salaries was made by the Board of Education, according to Feller, in light of what the board called a “challenging” budget season. "Nothing is ever easy,” said Feller. “But at the end of the day, I think people recognized that this would be the right thing to do.”

One of the obstacles facing the Board of Education and central administration while crafting the budget was a $500,000 cut in state aid.

"It would be an understatement to say this budget season has been a challenge,” said Neil Brown, the board vice president. “It's been a challenge for everyone involved, and I think what the faculty association has done, what the supervisory group has done, and what the administration has done shows that everyone in the community holds the same ultimate goal, and that is to educate our students to the best of our ability with the resources that we have.”

The North Merrick Board of Education approved the agreements with the faculty association and supervisory unit, which formalized the actions.