By Petra Chesner Schlatter;
BucksLocalNews.com

Pennsbury School Board and the teachers’ union have started contract negotiations.

The first collective bargaining session between the Pennsbury School Board and the Pennsbury Education Association (PEA) took place Thursday, Jan. 7.

The current PEA contract, which covers the school district’s professional staff, including teachers, guidance counselors and nurses, will expire on June 30, 2010.

The chief negotiator for the board is Jeffrey Sultanik, Esq., of the law firm Fox, Rothschild, which is based in Blue Bell, Pa. Sultanik represented the board in the one-year extension to the current collective bargaining agreement.

Other members of Pennsbury’s negotiating team include Donald E. Harm, assistant superintendent of administration; Isabel Miller, business administrator; Bettie Ann Rarrick, director of Human Resources; and Joanne Godzieba, director of Financial Services.

George Miller, PEA president, who represents about 850 members, and Gary Smith, a paid negotiator who represents the union, met with the school district negotiating team. Smith is with the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA).

Miller described the meeting as “a meet and greet to discuss the rules and what we would both agree to for negotiations.”

He said, “The key issues will always be benefits, salary, length of day, number of days and conditions.

“I can’t really get into the specifics of what we’re going to negotiate,” he noted. “For now, I don’t want to delve into the nitty gritty.”

Miller said the board will have the PEA proposal by the end of January. He said the board is expected to give the PEA a counter offer when the two parties meet on Tuesday, Feb 16.

Miller said, “We’re looking for a fair and reasonable settlement in light of the fact that PEA took zero pay increase for its members. We’re looking to maintain competitiveness with the other local school districts to be able to attract and hold top quality teachers here.”

The economy will affect the situation “in the sense that money is tighter, budgeting will require more creativity in terms of funding from the school board.”

Miller said the PEA salary freeze saved the school district “in excess of $1.5 million last year. I would hope that that would help them look forward to budgets in the future.”

“The law provides PEA with the right to strike,” he said. “We certainly hope we will not have to exercise that right and good faith bargaining is the way to ensure that.

Beginning in October 2005, a PEA strike lasted for 23 days.

“The law is the law and we will follow whatever the law is in order to get a reasonable settlement,” he continued.

Representing the school board, Sultanik said the first session was procedural where the district and the PEA representatives met in order to comply with Act 88 of 1992, which is the law that governs bargaining in the district.

Sultanik said general factors, which are impacting bargaining in the district, were discussed. Those factors, according to Sultanik, are:

w “Because the district has a state aid ratio of less than 0.4, our Act 1 Index limitation, the maximum amount we can raise taxes is 2.9 percent for 2010-2011. Experts are telling us that index will drop to anywhere from 1.8 to 2.1 percent for the 2011-2012 school year.

* “We talked about the fact that because of the economic collapse in October 2008; the district has faced an onslaught of real estate tax assessment appeals that are substantively cutting into the district’s revenue stream.

* “Because of the economic collapse, we are not able to get any substantive money on our investments because of the low interest rate.

* “As the result of the economic collapse, we are not getting any transfer tax in real estate. When properties get sold and turn over, we get a percentile of the tax.

* “The consumer price index was in a negative territory or at zero.

* “Our health-benefit costs continue to increase and we are self-insured so it’s more difficult to predict, but the trend is clearly upward and substantial in excess of Act 1 index in terms of what we can raise in taxes.

* “The district is also in a financial position where it has not maintained a large fund balance. In fact, it is small in relationship to our budget — $174 million. The fund balance is only approximately $725,000.

* “The cost of funding the pension of employees has dramatically increased and continues to increase geometrically…It’s going up not on a straight basis. It’s going up on a dramatic level.

“We are currently paying about 4.8 percent of salaries or pensions,” Sultanik said. “That will go up to 8.3 percent – almost an 85 percent increase in what we pay for pensions. That’s state law – we don’t have a choice. That number is going to go up 35 percent for salaries by 2014-2015.

“That is so high that it has the potential of bankrupting every school district and municipality in the state. It is a crisis of unprecedented proportions,” he said.