BELFAST, Maine — After nearly two and a half years of contract negotiations, RSU 20 directors and the teacher’s union are no closer to a resolution — and Superintendent Bruce Mailloux said Monday that the protracted dispute is “like a cancer.”
“It eats at your district,” he said. “Morale, attitudes, all of that. It’s in everybody’s best interests to get this done.”
Because the members of the Education Association by the Bay at the end of February voted down a proposed contract settlement, the dispute now will be addressed in arbitration — the last step in a state-mandated contract resolution process.
Betty Lu Brown, president of the 180-member association, said the vote was nearly unanimous not to accept the contract. The sticking point, she said, is that this contract would be the first to unite teachers from the former SAD 56 in Searsport and the former SAD 34 in Belfast, which were brought together under Maine’s school consolidation law. The consolidated district includes the communities of Belfast, Belmont, Frankfort, Morrill, Northport, Searsmont, Searsport, Stockton Springs and Swanville.
Salaries for SAD 34 teachers were generally much higher than the salaries for SAD 56 teachers.
The rejected contract would have placed all teachers from the two former districts on the same salary scale by the 2013-2014 school year, according to a statement from the school board that was issued last week.
The scale would have ranged from $31,310 for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree to $54,630 for a 15-year teacher with a master’s degree.
Brown said that left “quite a few” of the former SAD 34 employees without a salary increase, or even with a decrease when considering that teachers do have to pay part of the cost of their insurance and that portion is going up, too.
“Nobody’s going to agree to less take-home pay,” she said.
But Mailloux disagreed with this assessment, saying that no one would “go behind” in salary in the contract although some teachers might have spent two years without a step increase. There are 16 steps altogether.
“The initial goal for everybody was to create equity across the region,” he said, adding that it’s common right now for medical insurance costs to go up. “That’s happening everywhere.”
Brown said teachers just want to be treated equitably.
“We understand that there’s not all this money out there,” she said. “But we did expect there to be some fairness.”
Mailloux said he took issue with the idea that the rejected contract wasn’t fair.
“The goal … is to bring all teachers up to a common salary. In order to do that, some people are not going to get as much of an increase as other people,” he said. “I think this board has gone way out of its way to try to be fair.”
According to Mailloux, the three-member panel of arbitrators would bring together someone representing the association, someone representing the administration and a neutral party.
He said if things move quickly, the contract might be resolved in a month and a half. It is the first time in recent memory that the contract negotiation process has had to go to arbitration.
After listening to all the anti-union posters here, I was under the impression that all public employees got their contracts signed sealed and delivered automatically by the Democratic Party.
It may seem that way because only the Democratic Party will stand up for democratic institutions like the teachers’ unions. One only needs to look at the state of the current Republican Party in Maine with its anachronistic 1970 style approach to 21st century politics and its inability to connect to Maine voters. I would submit that not only is inequitable pay illegal (How many of those male Belfast teachers make more than their female counterparts from Searsport doing the same job?) and that the current School Board should be held accountable; perhaps it is time for the residents of this new RSU to toss out the current board members and restore equability and stability to the school district. But better yet, let the state step in – Maine teachers across the state should receive the same pay (and pay increments). Compare the pay scales for a teacher with 5 years experience at Cape Elizabeth to the same level at Stearns in Millinocket. No wonder there is such educational disparity in education across the state. Equal pay for equal work!
Teacher contract negotiations can be brutal. School boards face the ever increasing cost of health insurance, the high cost of oil to heat the schools, the high price of diesel for the buses, and the mandates the FEDS have that require extra non-teaching employees.
As quoted, negotiations are like cancer, they just keep spreading, and eating away at moral, civility, and performance. My last 8 years of teaching, I did not receive a raise at all. There was nothing I could do but cut out the luxuries, and limit spending. Each year health insurance cost more because of rate increases.
It’s in every ones interest to have a settled contract as soon as the parties can work it out.
Just where did you teach where you did not get a raise for 8 years? And did you get “step” increases in that time?
I’ve never seen education under attack like it is today.
The reason is that Republicans–who are climate deniers,
evolution-attackers, birthers, gay-bashers, death-panel pumpers and
Armageddon-pushers–can’t afford an educated citizenry. They live in a
realm of ignorance that breeds ignorance.
“The school is the last expenditure upon which
America should be willing to economize.” Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Your hate consumes you!
Whoa! So are you suggesting that the reason for the impasse is that Bruce Maillux and the RSU 20 directors are all ignorant Republicans who tune into Rush Limbaugh every day? I’m not buying the bridge you’re trying to sell.
And, by the way, I am all for INVESTING in education which delivers results rather than throwing money at a system that fails our kids by a whole series of objective measures.
So it sounds like if you are a Searsport teacher, you are happy since your salary will most certainly increase (and seemingly at the expense of Belfast teachers). If that is the case (and it seems that it is), I can understand Belfast teachers not being happy. The irony here is that they don’t want to essentially subsidize the former SAD 56 teachers. I wonder what they think about the wealthy subsidizing virtually everything in this country in the way of their taxes.
Part of the issue is the district is in a hole financially; the School Board has failed as well as the teachers – it is ridiculous for there not to be a contract for 2 1/2 years. Again – seems to be some civil rights issues within the district here as I mentioned in an earlier post. Perhaps the union membership needs to elect new Union leadership ( which I’m sure has a majority composed of Belfast teachers) that represents all the teachers equitably and the district voters need to replace the school board members in order to move forward and stop the inequality and discrimination they have engaged in. Perhaps the Searsport teachers should consider a class action lawsuit against both the union and district in this particular case.
I’m wondering how this is going to be seen and used in the RSU’s other area’s ? The Consolidation Plan called for this issue to be addressed but now that it’s here suddenly everyone’s surprised. And given Bowen’s call for ‘educational reform’, I just can’t wait to see how the DOE is going to react. Even now I can see Bowen’s MHPC speechwriter’s ordering more oar’s for the galley slaves ……
“Brown said that left “quite a few” of the former SAD 34 employees without a salary increase, or even with a decrease when considering that teachers do have to pay part of the cost of their insurance and that portion is going up, too.” She forgot to mention that they still all have their jobs. I haven’t had a pay raise in the past three years and my health insurance costs have increased every year as well but I still have my job, which is a plus in this current economy.
The teachers and staff in RSU 20 (former SAD34) have nothing to complain about. Their cointract has provided them interest free loans, free education expenses with automatic pay upgrades for years at tax payers expense.
Time for Ms. Brown and her co-workers to stop thew whining and be thankful for what they have!
Fire them all. Institute a salary schedule that makes sense economically for the district and hire new teachers. Any one who doesn’t like the offered pay can go elsewhere.
You have to have justifiable cause to fire these individuals, its not lawful to simply “purge employees” with no justification – your reasoning is why we need our democratically supported unions.
You are partially right. Normal employers have the right to fire at will. But Teachers are a Special Class, above common people.
So don’t fire them. Tell them that this is the budget,this is what the communities can afford at this time, this is what we have to spend on salaries, you are all taking a 10% cut, no more increased pay for advanced degrees, no more paid sabbaticals, you will pay 25% of your health insurance cost if you want it, take it or leave it.
Even FDR, patron saint #2 of progressives, warned against and refused to allow public employee unions. There are actually very good reasons for this, especially in the case of public schools. Public schools are mandated by law meaning there is no way they can go bankrupt, end, etc. They are also an effective monopoly. This is absolutely the worst possible combination of factors that is possible. Now you have public employee unions who have the power to dictate what taxpayers will be forced to pay in taxes to support their never ending demands and greed.
I actually have thought of a way to legally get around the public school system and end the teachers union holding tax payers hostage. But neither the local government officials nor most of the tax payers have the b*lls to stand up and fight.
Yep, hire the village fool to teach your kids. Let’s pay them $8.50 per hour with no benefits. It’s good enough for them. Yep, nothing but the best for our kids.
Considering the quality of the education that many students with diplomas have received, (effectively illiterate, unable to read, write, add, and with no knowledge of history, geography, etc.), I would say we already have too many “village fools” teaching our kids.
Maybe if we put a little fear in them, meaning they may get FIRED, they might actually start doing their jobs.
The other factor you fail to comprehend is that a community only has a limited amount of money it can raise from taxes. Teachers are usually among the best paid members of the communities they live in. You may have noticed that per-capita income in this country has stayed relatively flat for at least 20 years now. Since teachers and government workers have enjoyed steady increases over that same time period it is logical to deduce that the average pay of everyone else has actually gone down . (Basic Math here.)
This happens to be an Unsustainable path. It’s time teachers and government workers have to face the facts of life.
Now that the LPG moratorium in Searsport has been voted down, I say let DCP pay the Searsport teachers’ salaries. Let’s start reaping some of those economic benefits we’ve been hearing so much about.