Teachers' Overflow Crowd Gives BOE an Earful

An overflow crowd of more than 100, mostly teachers, packed a Haddonfield school board meeting Thursday night at the high school.

The board got an earful from more than a dozen teachers, including their union representatives, frustrated with the glacial pace of a contract negotiation. The teachers have worked under an expired contract for 16 months. State law prohibits public teacher strikes.

"I’m very frustrated,” said Jackie Carroll, co-president of the Haddonfield Education Association, which represents teachers and a number of other district employees. “This is not fun. This is not comfortable for anybody.”

The board was grilled for nearly a half-hour before going into a closed-door, executive session in which no public was allowed. Board President Steve Weinstein said the executive session was for a “personnel matter.”

“I think the teachers are moving toward negotiating in public," Weinstein said before the executive session started. "We have put before them, in explicit detail, every bit of money and every dollar and every cent we have available. We are capped in what we can tax people. We are trying to maintain staff and programs.”

Carroll, not surprisingly, had a different view.

"I disagree that we're negotiating in public," she said. "We were speaking to settling a contract. We were not giving any specifics about anything taking place at the negotiation table."

Both sides were prepared to sit down with a fact-finder this month. But the individual selected to be the fact-finder has not recovered from a recent surgery and a replacement is not immediately available. The delay is fraying nerves on both sides and with the public.

“My opinion is both sides are being negligent, irresponsible to their constituency,” said Charles Benson, a retired university microbiology professor. “If they were being responsible to the students and to the teachers, both sides would have solved this earlier. It’s ridiculous that teachers should work without a contract. It’s ridiculous the administration would allow that to happen.”

Benson, 73, taught for 47 years before recently retiring. He said his starting salary in 1960 was $4,000 a year and he paid 50 percent of his health insurance costs. He attended Thursday’s meeting with a group of boy scouts trying to earn merit badges for citizenship.

Ellen Stone attended the meeting with her daughter, Dana, a student representative on the board.

“I feel sad about this,” she said. “I just hope this is resolved soon.”

Last month, teachers postponed Back to School night, when parents meet teachers. Carroll said it's uncertain if more actions are planned. Union representatives say their costs have increased over the 16 months since the previous contract expired and teachers are shelling out more money for expenses, such as health insurance, without compensation. They are not paid for Back to School nights.

Both sides have previously said health-care costs and a state-imposed 2-percent cap on tax increases have been prominent in many labor negotiations with public employees in the state.

"Hey, I'm a taxpayer, too," Carroll said. "The property taxes in this state are out of control. But I think some of the policies that have been passed have made negotiations extremely difficult."