School appeals order to raise pay

By Ed Runyan

The filing says complying with a state ruling would damage the school district financially.

WARREN — The Brookfield school board has appealed a November ruling from the State Employment Relations Board that ordered the district to rescind actions it took in 2006 to reduce employee salaries and replace union jobs with nonunion positions.

The board filed the appeal in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court this week, saying the SERB order fails to comply with basic and accepted legal principles.

“The order, if enforced, would require the board to raise the salaries of all teachers in the district retroactive to July 1, 2006,” the suit said. “This holding alone would push the district over the precipice of fiscal emergency, where it now teeters,” the filing said.

The appeal was filed by David Millstone, an attorney with the law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey of Cleveland. The case is assigned to Judge Andrew Logan.

SERB announced last month in a ruling approved by two of three members — the third abstained — that the district violated Ohio law by “unilaterally reducing the salaries of [union] employees, abolishing the [union] position of technology coordinator and replacing it with the [nonunion] position of computer network/support technician and by replacing [union] nursing positions with [nonunion] clinical assistant positions.”

The school board approved a resolution June 28, 2006, that set the 2006-07 salaries for the district’s union employees back to the level of the 2004-05 school year, reducing salaries by 3.5 percent, according to documents filed in the case.

Additionally, the board replaced union member Karen Marshall, who retired during summer 2006 as technology coordinator, with Dave Cessna, under the title of computer network support technician, a nonunion position, the documents say.

The board also abolished one full-time union nursing position and one part-time union nursing position and instead contracted with Ready Nurse Staffing Services, the documents say.

The school board and union, the Brookfield Federation of Teachers, continued to bargain on a new contract throughout 2006 and into 2007.

SERB issued a cease-and-desist order last month requiring the district to return salaries of all teachers and union-covered employees to their 2005-2006 levels, retroactive to July 1, 2006; re-establish the full-time and part-time nursing positions; rehire both bargaining-unit members, paying back pay and all benefits to them; and re-establish the bargaining unit position of technology coordinator.

runyan@vindy.com