Representatives of the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education and the teachers’
union, the Bridgewater-Raritan Education Association are scheduled to meet
informally today to see if stalled negotiations can be productively resumed.
Earlier this summer, talks between the two parties had broken down when
the BREA, apparently frustrated with being unable to come to an agreement
before June 30, the end of the now-expired three-year wage and benefits
contract, decided to declare an impasse to negotiations and to call for the
appointment of a mediator to be brought into the negotiations.
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| Mr. Doheny addresses the Board, 7/18/11 (Bergeron Photo) |
Calls last week to Board President Evan Lerner and BREA President Steve
Beatty confirmed that, after several attempts at scheduling a meeting, a date
was finally pinned down for today. This
get-together is intended to be informal – no attorney advisors present – in a
move to get talks moving again.
The background to this is that
on July 18th, a previously unscheduled B-R BOE meeting was quickly
convened specifically to discuss disposition of the $1.3 million of additional
state aid which the New Jersey Department of Education unexpectedly decided to
award to this school district, as part of a package to all other New Jersey
school entities.
During the public comment period of the July 18th meeting at
the Wade Building, Mr. Dave Doheny, who is a teacher in the Bridgewater-Raritan
School District and a member of the BREA’S negotiation team, came to the podium
to address Bridgewater-Raritan’s Board of Education.
Addressing Board members at the lectern, Mr. Doheny offered to get
talks going again when he said, “As far
as negotiations go, we are willing to open [them] again. If you want to meet, let’s do it
tomorrow. Leave the lawyers out of
it. Let us talk. We have already given
back to residents.”
In our telephone discussion of August 3rd, Mr. Steve Beatty,
BREA President, confirmed his union’s desire to re-open talks and, of
importance to him and his members, to put on the table the question of funds
which he said were not present when the budget was originally voted upon in
April of this year.
At the July 18th Board meeting, Beatty stated that, “A large pool of dollars” was now
available; and, should some of it be made available for a contract settlement, the
net impact would still be a “fair budget”
result.
In our conversation of August 3rd, Mr. Beatty elaborated on
his thinking, stating that since the budget was passed, more money is now
available from at least three sources: A
reduction in the Board’s planned health care costs; additional school aid from
the State of New Jersey, a portion of which was deferred to next year’s budget
and not specifically earmarked; and, finally, what Mr. Beatty claims is “unanticipated revenue” disclosed at a
post-budget Board meeting.
Beatty said that an analysis done by his union indicates that the
latter amount results from staff retirement savings, or what is commonly known in
education circles as “breakage.”
The question of whether any additional funds are in fact available for
a contract settlement or, if there is such “found”
money, how it should be deployed could be a key issue when the parties meet
today.
I don’t know what the thinking of the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of
Education is going to be on this matter.
However, the pressing need for maintaining prudence and reserves in the
2011/2012 Bridgewater-Raritan School Budget; the pressure to hold down real
estate taxes; the current state of the deteriorating economy; and, the extreme
volatility in the financial markets are all combining to make it very difficult
for the B-R BOE to consider loosening up its purse strings.
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