Board, teachers OK new contract

The settlement comes after nine months of negotiations.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

AUSTINTOWN — The new pact between teachers and the board of education allows teachers to have a say in scheduling planning time.

Teachers and the board of education agreed on a two-year contract Tuesday.

The agreement comes after nine months of negotiations and after talks stalled in November, with bickering between the union and the former school board president over who got to decide how much planning time teachers would be allowed.

Sandy DeCerbo, Austintown Education Association president who has cited a new spirit of cooperation between the union and the school board, said the latest proposal passed the union membership by an overwhelming majority.

The school board met at 5 p.m. and ratified the contract as well in a 4-1 vote. Board member Richard Zimmermann voted against it.

Former board president Michael Creatore left when his term was up at the end of December. He had an acrimonious relationship with the union, and he wanted building administrators only, not teachers, to have a say in whether they would be asked to give up planning time for more teaching time.

DeCerbo said the new proposal was arrived at with the help of a mediator Friday.

The contract allows teachers to also have a say over the scheduling issue — which is unchanged from their contract that expired in August.

Creatore told The Vindicator in recent months that the school board had been unanimous in pushing for management’s control of planning time, which Zimmermann confirmed Tuesday.

“With 84 teachers at Fitch [High School], if each one would get rid of one planning period, we could teach 84 more classes,” he said after the meeting.

Creatore had asserted that doing away with an extra planning period at Fitch would save the district money, and that the state had recommended it. Teachers had countered that they didn’t want to be a state-minimum-standards school district.

Zimmermann said he isn’t sure why the board was no longer in agreement that administrators should decide scheduling issues.

Some mentioned the possibility of a strike, and some said the controversy had gone on too long, he added.

starmack@vindy.com