Talks between Unionville-Chadds
Ford School District teachers and the school board have broken down and some
people are thinking about the possibility of a strike.

“We’re growing
frustrated…bargaining seems to be moving backwards,” said teachers’ union
President Pat Clark. “Our best option is to get back to the table and get this
thing worked out.”

Members of the
Unionville-Chadds Ford Education Association and the district have been
negotiating in separate rooms from one another.

Clark said talks broke down
because the district has changed its position on some of the concessions it
made in May regarding pay hikes. He said teachers were fine with a pay freeze
during the first year of a new contract, but balked when the district changed
its position on increases during subsequent years.

“We were asked in public
whether we would accept a salary freeze and we certainly agreed to that [but]
that salary offer disappeared,” he said. “The offer they came back with in July
was actually less money than their May proposal.”

The difference, Clark said, was
in the second and third years where the district wanted to delay step
movement—the incremental increases teachers receive for years on the job.
Instead, the board wants to establish a bonus for one of those years rather
than money on scale.

Clark said the idea is to get
back to the table, but admits that the possibility of a strike has come up. He
added, though, that’s not the focus at this time.

Frank Murphy, the school board
director handling negotiations for the board said there has been no talk of a strike
except for comments made by the teacher association’s negotiator.

“The word strike has not come
up in conversation between the teacher’s union and the school board. The only
time I’ve seen that word used was in the local press when the union’s paid negotiator
out of Harrisburg, Ruthann Waldie used that phrase seemingly to try to raise
the stakes,” Murphy said.

The difference in the May and
July proposals, Murphy said, was based on a July 1 deadline. Had the union
agreed to terms before that date, he said, the district would have reaped
greater savings on the healthcare provision of the proposed contract. That
level of saving could have been passed on to the teachers in their salary.

“The teachers’ association was
aware of the importance of getting a contract by that July 1 date so the school
district could maximize healthcare savings,” he said. “Because the teachers’
association rejected our May offer and no settlement has been reached, savings
we were anticipating to fund salaries are not there to the same magnitude.”

The incremental decrease in the
salary component was made to avoid what Murphy called a “salary-busting
contract.”

The teachers’ contract is based
on three components, salary, benefits and work rules.

Murphy said while the board
accepted the findings of a state-appointed neutral mediator during the winter,
the union rejected the offer that, he said, would have paid the teachers more
than what was proposed in the last two offers.

While talks are not going
smoothly and the sides are not even meeting in the same room, Murphy said there
is a way out of the impasse.

“Union leadership and their
hired negotiator out of Harrisburg have got to stop threatening the public, the
parents and the students with threats of work stoppage. They need to stop attacking
the board as being fraudulent. They need to stop the accusations and start
negotiating in the same room with us in order to get to a deal.”

The two sides are scheduled
meet again on Aug. 9. Murphy said he has no idea what the format will be.

Teachers have been without a
contract since the end of the 2009-2010 school year. They spent the past
academic year working under status quo.