Teacher Offer Unseen by Board Due to Secrecy Concerns

The teacher's union brought a proposal to yesterday's budget meeting which offered to return a portion of their payroll to the district, increase their medical premium contributions and a plan that would help the district project the number of retirees and associated savings for the next three years.

Only the Board of Education never saw it.

Prior to presenting their offer, teacher union leaders asked the board to keep their discussions private, except for issuing a statement to the public that they had received a proposal from the union.

"We came with a proposal to ease the pain in our district. We care about our students, our programs and the quality of life here," said Sandy Grebinar, union president. "But at this critical time before the next budget vote, we did not want to divide the community in any way, and open negotiations may have caused people to take sides. The most important thing is to pass the budget."

Read the teacher proposal on Patch, posted with this article.

But the board couldn't get past the request for privacy, and the negotiations never happened. Any attempt to keep information from the public would be counterproductive to a commitment to transparency, said school board president, Michael Gordon.

Gordon said he agreed with Grebinar on the need to unify the community, but not with her approach.

"We have nothing to hide from the community," he said. "And without knowing what the proposal was, we couldn't put ourselves in a position of not being able to talk about it."

The union's approach to the board represents the third attempt at negotiations this budget season; the union previously rejected a salary freeze requested by the Board of Education in January, and a second attempt at re-opening talks failed in April.

Grebinar said there were better ways to help the district than a temporary pay freeze, which could potentially affect the lifetime income and retirement benefits of teachers.

"We do want to help, and we were prepared to explore other options with this memorandum crafted by a committee of teachers. We thought it could have been a short period of non-transparency. We care about keeping our schools fully functioning and providing special opportunities for our students," she said.

Carl Korn, a representative of the New York State teacher's union, said that more than 100 districts have re-negotiated contracts with their teacher's unions in the last 18 months, but there was no "one size fits all" method.

He pointed out that there were multiple approaches to working out new deals.

Some unions take less salary, others increase their health care contributions and some agree to longer days, he said. A pay freeze does affect the income of the teacher over the long-term, said Korn, because as they move up the pay scale, increases are not compounded.

"The best negotiations are collaborative," he said. "It can work."