Carmichaels board ratifies five-year teacher pact
CARMICHAELS – The Carmichaels Area School Board has solidified a five-year contract with the teachers’ union. The pact, which the Carmichaels Area Education Association (CAEA) ratified at an after-school meeting Thursday, got a unanimous vote later that evening from the school board.
The pact gives the teachers a collective $8,198 wage hike over the five years, or an average of about $1,600 each year. Also significant was the option to choose health insurance coverage from among the old indemnity plan or a new point-of-service plan, as well as a retirement incentive for teachers at the top of the service ladder.
Both sides had good things to say about the new contract, which will be made effective retroactive to July 1, when the prior contract expired.
Board President Ron Ferek, who with director Ken Ganocy represented the school board in negotiations, and CAEA President Evan Kovach gave the highlights outside the school board meeting.
“It’s a win-win for the district and the teachers,” Kovach said.
He said the health insurance options and opportunity for the teachers at the high end of the wage scale to retire early should funnel some money back to the district.
“Throughout the entire time of negotiations – and we have been at this since January – it’s not been adversarial, not once. We treated each other as ladies and gentlemen and had excellent dialogue back and forth. The process has been quite lengthy, but what we ended up with is a thing of beauty,” Ferek said.
The school board had gone into executive session for just more than an hour to discuss the contract and took the vote immediately after returning, with director Mike Conte making the motion for approval.
Saying he agreed with 95 to 96 percent of the agreement, Ganocy had at first passed on voting, then gave a yes vote to make it unanimous among the nine members. He said to remember when talking about the wages contained in the contract that Carmichaels’ teachers have been paid less than other teachers in the area have for the last few years. Directors Jerry Simkovic and J.L Lechner made similar comments.
“It looks like this is a very fair contract, a good contract, both ways,” Simkovic said, thanking the teachers for working while they did under the old contract.
“I think it’s fair to the taxpayers and the teachers,” Lechner added.
The spouses of Lechner and directors Linda Krajnak and Robert O. Hathaway are represented by the agreement. Asked about their affirmative votes, Ferek and business manager Vince Belczyk said the directors were all permitted to vote but those with spouses in the union could have nothing to do with the negotiations.
Ferek said only he and Ganocy participated in the talks and had knowledge of the contract in progress.
The CAEA represents 84 members.
The previous contract was for a term of three years and included pay raises of $975 each year, according to Kovach.
He noted that the prior contract was an “early bird” agreement that did not give the two parties an opportunity to work through the contract language. However, he said that during negotiations for the new agreement, they had time to work on the language, a positive aspect of the talks.