HERMITAGE, PA. Teachers, board plan more talks
The state Department of Education said Friday will be the last day of the strike.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- Negotiators for teachers and the school board in the Hermitage School District will be back at the bargaining table Monday.
The district's 165 teachers, members of the Hermitage Education Association (HEA), went on strike Thursday after a bargaining session Tuesday night failed to resolve the dispute that has had the teachers working without a contract this school year.
Monday will be the third day of the strike, and teachers will be on the picket lines again.
The state Department of Education informed the school district Friday that it won't allow the strike to go beyond next Friday, its seventh day.
The state said teachers will have to be back in the classroom April 1 to ensure the district can complete 180 days of classroom instruction by June 15, said Karen Ionta, district superintendent.
Can force return: The state secretary of education has the authority to secure an injunction to force the teachers to return at that point, but that probably won't be necessary.
Paul Estock, chief negotiator for the teachers, has said the teachers will follow the state's directives regarding the length of the work stoppage.
The state will require the two sides to enter nonbinding arbitration to try to work out a compromise settlement.
The school board directed Ionta Thursday night to contact the state mediator who has been sitting in on the bargaining sessions and ask that a meeting be scheduled with the teachers' negotiating team.
The teachers had said they were ready to meet again at any time.
Ionta said Friday that the two sides will meet at 7 p.m. Monday.
The teachers had suggested the dispute be submitted to state-directed fact-finding during Tuesday's last bargaining session, but the school board refused.
The reason: The two sides were just too far apart to make it worthwhile, said Duane Piccirilli, school board president.
The board had offered an average annual wage increase of $1,600 per teacher while the teachers were asking for an average increase of $2,700. The current average wage is $47,033.
Piccirilli said that a fact finder would most likely just split the difference between the two, but the school board felt it had already offered the best deal it could provide.
The board is willing to sit and listen to what the teachers have to say, but it still isn't interested in fact-finding, he said.
Estock said the teachers are willing to move downward from the $2,700 figure, but that such movement must be part of a negotiating process. If the teachers lower their demands, they expect the school board to raise its offer in compromise, he said.
The teachers didn't want to go on strike but believed it was the only way to force the negotiating process to the next step -- nonbinding arbitration of the final best offers from the two sides, Estock said.
Act 88, the state law governing teacher contract negotiations, forces talks into nonbinding arbitration once the teachers strike.