Wednesday, October 27, 2010
By Denise Dick
youngstown
If the city school board approves a teachers contract and a raise for nonunion employees, the cost of the increased salaries totals about $474,000.
Last week, the Youngs-town Education Associa-tion, the union representing the district’s approximately 600 teachers, approved a new contract with the board, but no details were released pending board approval.
Earlier this month, the board approved contracts with the 295-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, which includes secretaries, food-service workers and custodians and the crafts unions that include seven or eight plumbers, electricians and carpenters.
Those two pacts called for raises of 1 percent in each of the two years.
Although there has been no vote, the board’s business committee last week heard a proposal from the district’s operations chief for a 1 percent increase for administrative and other non-union personnel including some clerical workers.
At the request of the finance committee, Treasurer William Johnson prepared estimates of the totals of the increased salaries based on 1 percent raises for all of the groups. The figures don’t include the cost of benefits.
The salary increases total $474,057 — $326,207 for the teachers, $109,919 for AFSCME and the crafts unions and $37,932 for the administrators and other nonunion employees.
The employees have been without increases in base salary for four years.
Johnson has said that the increases amount to less than what the district accounted for in devising a five-year financial forecast model.
The district hopes to be released from fiscal emergency early next year. As part of the requirements for that to happen though, is submittal of a five-year forecast to the state that shows the district remains in the black.
The district has been in fiscal emergency since 2006.