Weathersfield teachers have new three-year pact
By Mary Smith
MINERAL RIDGE
The Weathersfield Board of Education and the Mineral Ridge Education Association’s 53 teachers have a new, three-year contract.
It includes an increase in the base salary from $28,798 to $30,000 for fiscal year 2014; a 1 percent increase in fiscal 2015 and a 0 percent increase in FY 2016.
The average salary will be $53,000, although treasurer Laurena Rouan noted she has 20 teachers being paid less than that.
Their old contract was also a three-year pact, from July 16, 2010 to July 15, 2013. Teachers received 2.25 percent in the first year, 1.5 percent in the second year and 0 percent in the last year.
All employees will be switched to a semi-monthly pay system, instead of the every two weeks system now being used.
Starting Dec. 31, 2013, all employees must also switch to PPO-2 or PPO-3 level health coverage. PPO-1 , the top tier, will be eliminated. It had been unavailable to employees hired on July 1, 2008 or later.
Deductibles are higher under PPO-2, going from $200 for a family under PPO-1 to $700 under PPO-2. The single deduction was $100 and will now be $350.
Out-of-pocket costs were $400 for a single employee and will now be $1,350. The family out-of-pocket was $800, and will now be $2,700.
Co-pays and items covered stay the same.
The board also rehired Cindy Mulgrew as Seaborn Elementary School principal, after she retired effective June 30.
Mulgrew, who started as a teacher in the district in 1975, was made principal in July 1988.
Her new three-year contract runs from Sept. 1, 2013, to July 31, 2016. She will earn $66,000 a year under the new contract.
When she retired Mulgrew was being paid $74,470 for the 2012-2013 school year at the end of a five-year contract, Rouan said.