BOE signs contracts with employee unions

By ELISE McKEOWN SKOLNICK

and Ashley luthern

news@vindy.com

BOARDMAN

The board of education signed three-year contracts with both of its employee unions that will go into effect Thursday.

There is no increase in base salary in either agreement with the teachers and the support staff unions, said Ken Beraduce, board president.

The contract with the Boardman Education Association also freezes step increases for the first two years of the contract, but allows for the potential in the third year.

The payroll cost for all district employees including teachers was about $6.4 million during the 2010-11 school year, Beraduce said.

“The increases that are in our performance increases are based on meeting certain state standards,” Beraduce said. “In the third year, based upon performance in the first two years, [teachers] have the potential of getting a two-step increase.”

The starting salary for a teacher is $31,963 annually.

Both unions previously signed two-year contract extensions that did not include base-pay salary increases. The BEA extension included stipends for teachers not receiving a longevity increase as provided in that contract. The contracts were set to expire Thursday.

In the newly adopted contracts, the board will pick up the tab for the 5 percent increase in health- insurance costs in the first year of the contract, Beraduce said. The following two years, union members will pick up any increases in health-care costs.

“So we basically have flat-lined our health care costs. And that flat-line in the last two years goes back to actually this year’s cost, which is less the 5 percent increase,” Beraduce said. “So it’s a real leading-edge type of a contract, to be able to do it, along with the fact that we’ve worked with them to put together a health insurance committee to actually shop for potentially less-costly health insurance.”

Boardman Education Association President Dave Pavlansky said the contract is “appropriate and provides stability.”

He added that the health care savings is significant.

“If we were to continue at roughly a 10 percent increase [in health- care costs] per year, compounded, we’re talking about roughly a $2 million savings for the board,” Pavlansky said.

He said the new contract “sends the message that collective bargaining does work.”

“And it’s a sign that [employees] get it. They get the economic times. They get the fact that we can’t go back to the community for more taxes. We all need to tighten our belts,” Pavlansky said.

There are approximately 315 members in the BEA and 80 in the Ohio Association of Public School Employees, Chapter 334.

Parents of students in the district’s gifted program addressed the board Monday night after learning that the program had been cut.

“The program is being rolled into the regular curriculum and we will still provide enhancement learning for accelerated kids,” Beraduce said.

“We are providing our staff with ongoing training on being able to provide additional work and challenges for these children that are advanced. We really are trying to do everything we can to still provide it to them, it just won’t be a separate program.”

Superintendent Frank Lazzeri said that children are given ability and achievement tests in elementary and middle school and are placed in the gifted program based on test scores.

“The law states that you have to identify but you don’t have to serve [gifted students]” he said. “It’s not quite the same as special education. The monies aren’t attached to it in the way they are for special education.”