Board President: District, Association Still at Impasse

Board of Education President Evan Lerner announced Tuesday that the board and the remain at impasse after a five-hour March 15, and are now prepared to go into fact-finding.

Click here for a press release on the mediation from the B-REA

Lerner read a prepared statement at the board of education meeting, announcing that the mutual mediator determined future mediation sessions would not yield an agreement, and fact finding will begin in three weeks.

Read Lerner's complete statement below:

On March 15, 2012, the Board’s negotiation team participated in the third mediation session with the B-REA’s negotiating team. The session lasted almost five hours. Unfortunately, the sides were unable to come to an agreement.

At the end of the session the mediator advised that he believed future mediation sessions were unlikely to lead to a settlement. As a result, per his referral, the parties will enter fact finding, the next stage in the legal process. It is anticipated that fact finding will commence in approximately three weeks. The fact finding process can last up to approximately six months.

Two issues dominated the back and forth of the parties during the three mediation sessions, instructional time requirements for high school teachers and salary.

Instructional Time

The instructional time requirement issue relates to the measurement of how many minutes per day a teacher spends instructing students. For the majority of teachers in the district, it is not an issue as most of our teachers are instructing students an appropriate portion of each day. This is not the case for most of the teachers at the high school. This cohort represents about 25 percent of our teachers.

Currently, these high school teachers are assigned five classes per day. Each class lasts 40 minutes for a total of 200 instructional minutes per day. The remainder of their daily schedule includes a lunch period and three additional periods for prep and duties [hall monitoring and the like]. The result is that these teachers spend three hours, twenty minutes, or 56 percent [200/360], of their assigned time instructing students.

The 200 instructional minutes per day is the lowest instructional minute requirement in Somerset County [tied for last]. It is also the lowest instructional minute requirement of any of the districts that make up our list of comparative districts—districts similar to ours which the board and administration use regularly for comparative purposes.

The average instructional minute requirement in Somerset County high schools is 229.8 minutes, the most common number of minutes required of high school teachers in the county is 240 and, at one Somerset County high school, teachers spend 258 minutes each day teaching students.

While the instructional minute requirement at BRHS is the lowest in the county, the median salary of a Bridgewater-Raritan teacher, $60,161, is the ninth highest of 18 districts in the county, or right in the middle. A clear goal of the board from the onset of negotiations was to correct this imbalance. We want our high school teachers to spend more time teaching our students.

The board crafted several plans to address this problem. The first was to add a sixth teaching period for these teachers. The district offered to pay additional compensation for those who took on a new sixth period. It also agreed that this change would be implemented through attrition rather than layoffs. The B-REA rejected this proposal.

More recently the board suggested that these teachers add a tutorial period to their day in lieu of a second prep or duty period. This would provide students an opportunity to get extra help during the school day from teachers. It would also add instructional minutes to the teachers’ day but not require additional grading or preparation responsibilities.

Salary

Several sets of financial offers were exchanged by the parties during the course of the mediation sessions. All of the board’s offers included the addition of a tutorial period. Each also required a switch from our current private health insurer to the state-sponsored plan. All board offers were also contingent on some additional changes in contract language. The offers exchanged were all for a three-year contract commencing July 1, 2011 and expiring on June 30, 2014,

The board’s last salary increase offer to the B-REA was:

A 1 percent raise in year one, a 2 percent raise in year two and a 2 percent raise in year three, for a total of 5 percent over three years

or [at the B-REA’s option]

A 1 1/2 percent cash payment in year one, a 2 percent raise in year two and a 2 percent raise in year three, for a total of 5 1/2 percent over three years.

The B-REA also made final offers, all of which included an agreement to move to the state health plan.

One B-REA proposal also included the addition of the tutorial period. That offer was:

A 2.85 percent raise in year one, a 2.85 percent raise in year two and a 2.85 percent raise in year three, for a total of 8.55 percent over three years.

The B-REA also made final proposals that maintained the status quo on instructional minutes [i.e., did not include the tutorial period]. These were:

A 2.5 percent raise in year one, a 2.5 percent raise in year two and a 2.5 percent raise in year three, for a total of 7.5 percent over three years.

or [at the board’s option]:

A 1 1/2 percent raise effective Feb. 1, 2012, a 2.5 percent raise effective July 1, 2012 and a 2.5 percent raise effective July 1, 2013, for a total of 6.5 percent over three years.

The board is disappointed with the results of the mediation process and is preparing for the fact finding process. The BOE stands ready to engage in talks at any time. We will continue to keep the public informed of developments and will advise it as to the specific dates relating to the fact finding stage when we know them.

—Evan Lerner, BOE president and member of board negotiations committee; Patrick Breslin, BOE vice president and member of board negotiations committee; Jeffrey Brookner, BOE member and chair of board negotiations committee; Arvind Mathur, BOE member and member of board negotiations committee.