By Doug Miller
The vote moved the head of the union to suggest that a "tremendous disruption" of the education process was possible if progress isn't made toward a new contract at the next negotiation session, scheduled for Dec. 21. "This board talks about public perception," said Frank Volpe, president of the Long Beach Classroom Teachers Association. "We deserve a fair contract. Come away from your perceptions and come in towards reality."
Volpe later called the board's rejection of the non-binding recommendations, which his union voted to accept, "embarrassing" and "insulting." The teachers' union has been working under the terms of an expired contract since July 1, 2004.
According to the arbiter's report, the school district is asking for a one-year wage freeze, a second-year increase smaller than the Nassau County average of 3.33 percent, and a third-year increase in line with the county average for 2006-07 of 3.49 percent. The teachers are seeking increases of 5.5 percent the first year, 6 percent the second year and 6.5 percent the third year.
The arbiter wrote in his report that the union "candidly acknowledges that its ... demands are as unrealistic as the District's wage freeze proposal ..." He also wrote that while the district's claim that Long Beach teachers have the highest median salaries in Nassau County is accurate, the numbers are easily skewed and "lack statistical significance."
The arbiter, John E. Sands, wrote, "I am satisfied that the district has failed to establish a persuasive case for its austere salary proposal" because, he continued, it has not behaved like a district that needs to tighten its belt by trying other cost-cutting measures.
Sands also blasted the district's claim of poverty. Compared with districts across the state, "Long Beach is a relatively wealthy community in a surpassingly wealthy county." And because the district spends only 76 percent of its budget on instruction, "If cutting costs is the district's critical concern, other areas than instruction may provide useful opportunities." A school official acknowledged that while the 76 percent figure is eighth-lowest in the county, as the report says, it is also very close to the county average.
The resolution passed Tuesday stated that the board was dissatisfied with the arbiter's failure to address teacher salaries, and the scope of teachers' contributions to their health insurance, which is about half what teachers elsewhere in the region pay.
The board's resolution also complained about the size of the contributions the district has had to make in recent years to the retirement system. The teachers' retirement plans are tied into the stock market, but were guaranteed by the individual districts, meaning that if the market went up, the value of the teachers' portfolios went up accordingly, but if the market went down, as it did in the early part of the decade, each school district had to make payments to cover the portfolio's significant losses.
While it is unlikely that the negotiations would change the Long Beach district's responsibility for these payments, the feeling among board members is that some consideration should thus be given to the size of the raises the teachers are asking for.
The resolution did accept two minor parts of the report, which deal with stipends for school nurses who receive post-graduate degrees, and stipends for middle school team leaders.
Next year's school budget, if past trends are any indication, will easily surpass the $100 million mark for the first time. The district's voters, from East Atlantic Beach to Point Lookout, have passed the budget on the first try in each of the last six years and in eight of the last nine years. Since 2003, voters in Oceanside, Baldwin, Lawrence and West Hempstead have rejected at least one budget, and the Lawrence district, which includes Atlantic Beach, seems to have its budgets rejected annually, a trend that is often blamed on the unusually high percentage of the population that sends its children to private religious schools.
Long Beach teachers have not gone on strike in memory, and the cost of doing so is steep, since state regulations require teachers to lose two days of pay for every day they are out. A more likely tactic may be a so-called "sickout," in which a large enough number of teachers call in sick on a specific day to force one or several schools to be closed for the day.
Superintendent of Schools Robert Greenberg said he would not comment on the content of the report, but blanched at Volpe's choice of words.
"I was disappointed to hear Frank say that the educational program may be disrupted," Greenberg said. "But knowing the staff as I do, my expectation is that this will not occur."
About 100 teachers packed the cafeteria of the Long Beach Middle School for Tuesday night's meeting, most wearing matching red T-shirts bearing the name of their union. One parent complained that the teachers also wear the shirts to school every Friday, calling it a distraction, but several board members insisted they did not believe the negotiations were having any effect on the teachers' classroom performance.
Both sides met with the arbiter on Aug. 31, and a report was expected within 30 days of the meeting, but school officials complained that they only received their copy of the report Dec. 6.
Volpe said the hearing with the arbiter, who was appointed by the state's Public Employment Relations Board, was fair and balanced, and added that by not accepting it, the district was "disrespecting" the process.
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