By Joseph Kellard
In the first year of the new contract - to take effect on July 1, 2006, replacing the current agreement, which was enacted in 1998 - teachers' salaries will increase by 3.75 percent, and in each subsequent year they will increase by 3.5 percent. "When you look at the New York/metropolitan cost of living, it's at or about the cost of living," said Superintendent Dr. William Johnson of the increases.
In return, teachers essentially agreed to double their health care contributions. "We feel that with the contract we have, teachers and teachers' assistants will maintain the high quality of education that we've come to expect and that has become nationally recognized," said Rose Stein, president of the Rockville Centre Teachers Association.
Stein explained that health care and its rising costs were top issues during negotiations. Under the guidelines of the previous contract, teachers' assistants were ineligible for health insurance. The RCTA wanted the district to provide assistants with coverage from the day of their hiring. The district offered to provide them with health insurance after their eighth year of employment with RVC schools.
Kathy Jaffa, a teacher's assistant who attended the negotiation meeting, pointed to other area school districts that provide their teachers' assistants with coverage immediately, or after a few years. Both sides ultimately agreed on the eight-year plan.
"One of our major concerns was getting the district to recognize that teachers' assistants do need to have health insurance," Stein said. "We know that we're behind other districts, but this is a start."
"We felt that their original proposal was too expensive, and that it needed to be phased in over time," Johnson said.
The superintendent said that there were numerous grievances that had to be resolved before the district and union met at the negotiating table. One issue was the length of the work day for teachers' assistants, which was "undefined," and T.A.'s in each school were working different hours. This led to dissension in the ranks, according to Johnson. Under the new contract, teachers' assistants will work the same hours as teachers.
"Little things like that, although they may not appear to be significant to the rest of the world, can create problems for employees," Johnson said.
He noted that many instructional issues had been resolved, such as the number of students assigned to various teachers, from special education to phys. ed. to music and performing arts.
"We clarified and resolved several educational issues with this contract," Stein said, "one of them being the teacher load."
Meg Koch, vice president of the school board, said the board was pleased that the district and union were able to avoid the contentiousness that often accompanies contract talks. "At the resolution of any contract, usually no side has everything they want," Koch said, "but they were able to sit at the table and work out an agreement which does satisfy the major issues for everyone."
Stein commended Johnson and the district for maintaining the use of the Harvard model of labor-management relations, which she described as "a procedure in the spirit of give-and-take as a means to solving a problem in a positive climate. We did exactly that."
"When you look at the overall impact of this contract," Johnson said, "you needed to take a look at it in context. And that context is the effect on the local taxpayers. ... I think it is a real credit to the teachers that they were willing to understand the financial problems of the district."
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