HERMITAGE STRIKE Board seeks to resume talks

Some think the teachers deserve the raise they seek while others think the school board's offer is fair.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- The Hermitage School Board has notified a state mediator that it wants to resume meeting with the district's striking teachers next week.
Duane Piccirilli, board president, said the board made that decision Thursday. However, the board still isn't interested in entering state fact-finding to resolve the contract dispute, he said.
The teachers, now in the second day of a strike, have said they are willing to meet and had suggested fact-finding as a way to settle the contract.
A state mediator has been participating in the negotiations for months.
Mixed support: Public reaction to the strike appears mixed.
Joseph LaRosa thinks Hermitage schoolteachers should get the pay raise they are seeking.
"I think teachers are underpaid anyway," the East State Street man said Thursday as Hermitage teachers went on strike. "We want better education, but we don't want to pay for it."
He said he believes the teachers are "justified" in seeking an average annual pay increase of $2,700.
"I agree," said his wife, Terri. The couple has a daughter, Samantha, enrolled in the first grade in Hermitage.
Support for the strike by the 165-member Hermitage Education Association was mixed in an informal survey of school district residents.
"I think they want too much," said Tony Fanone of Sunset Drive, explaining that the increases the teachers are seeking are too costly for those on fixed incomes.
"My pension's still the same," said the retiree, who worked for Sharon Steel Corp. 43 years. "Everything's going up. They raised my county tax $300 this year."
One woman, who declined to be identified because she said she has two children in the Hermitage schools, said she supports the school board, which has offered the teachers an average pay raise of $1,600 in each year of a proposed three-year contract.
"I think the teachers are asking too much," she said, suggesting that the teachers must realize that Mercer County residents were hit with a 36 percent county property tax increase this year and don't need a big school tax increase on top of it.
Estimated costs: School officials have estimated the financial package offered by the board would require an additional $264,000 a year, while the package proposed by the teachers would cost $445,000 more each year.
Teachers are making an average of $47,033 this year, with the top of the scale $63,200 for a 180-day school year.
Denny Trowbridge, 17, and Corina McKnight, 15, students at Hickory High School, had the day off because of the strike and were hanging out at the Shenango Valley Mall on Thursday afternoon.
They had somewhat different views on the monetary issue.
Denny, a junior, thinks teachers are worth the money they seek, but McKnight said she thought the amount is "a little high."
Both said the strike may be good for the teachers but not particularly good for the students.
However, a strike now has put the two-day Easter vacation in jeopardy and will delay the finish of school beyond the scheduled June 5 date, Corina said.
The strike has disrupted work on the $24 million expansion and renovation of Hickory High School, a job that is nearing completion. Union workers on that job refused to cross the teacher picket lines Thursday and today.
State limits: The strike will be short. The state has the power to force the teachers back into the classroom if it appears Hermitage wouldn't complete 180 days of classroom instruction by June 15.
That means a strike of only six or seven days will be permitted before the state forces teachers to return and both sides to enter nonbinding arbitration in an effort to resolve their dispute.
Negotiations on this contract began in January 2001.
The strike resulted in the cancellation of various extracurricular activities such as a a field trip for 24 second-graders who were supposed to tour Victor Printing in Sharon on Thursday.
A life skills/multihandicapped Easter party for 24 special education students scheduled for Tuesday at Artman Elementary School will also to be canceled unless the strike ends by then.