BY DARRELL HALEN
For the second time in a year, a proposed teacher contract will go before Pelham voters without the blessing of the town’s Budget Committee.
During its Thursday, Aug. 30, meeting, the panel voted 7-3 to not recommend the contract at a special town meeting. One member abstained.
John Lavallee, the group’s chairman, said after the meeting that teachers should be contributing more toward their share of health insurance premiums.
And he doesn’t believe the situation the school district is in justifies holding an emergency town meeting.
Last March, voters rejected a new three-year contract in a 1,491 to 1,187 vote. The budget committee did not support it.
Representatives of the school district and the Pelham Education Association went back to the bargaining table and revised the contract. Last month, a Superior Court judge allowed the school district to hold a special meeting.
Instead of offering salary increases averaging 5 percent each year, as the rejected contract did, the revised contract offers raises averaging 3.5 percent in the first year, and 4 percent in the following two years: $1,760 in 2007-08, $1,840 in 2008-09, and $1,920 in 2009-10.
The increases in the rejected contract were $2,430, $2,340 and $2,455.
Under the revised agreement, a new teacher with a bachelor’s degree would earn $32,100 in 2007-08. His or her salary will climb to $33,940 in 2008-09 and to $35,860 in 2009-10.
“I felt it was a fair contract,” said Donna Strasburger, a member of the teacher’s negotiating team, when she left the meeting. “It’s a cost-of-living equal with what the rest of the town employees have received.”
For some Budget Committee members, the amount of money teachers are contributing to health insurance is an issue.
Currently, the school district’s contribution to health insurance plans is the equivalent of 85 percent of the most expensive plan regardless of which plan teachers select.
Although the revised agreement provides for smaller raises, it retains the same cost-sharing plan that was in the rejected contract – the district’s contribution will decrease to 80 percent by the third year of the agreement.
Lavallee said that some teachers are paying very little toward their health insurance.
Like the rejected contract, the revised one calls for stipends for co-curricular positions, such as athletic coaches and club advisers, to increase 3.5 percent in the first year and remain unchanged the following two years.
The revised agreement, however, includes nine new co-curricular positions that will be added over three years.
The warrant article that has been written for the special town meeting calls for salaries and benefits to increase $283,514 in 2007-08, $324,437 in 2008-09, and $340,600 in 2009-10.
The agreement will be subject to debate at a deliberative session on Tuesday, Sept. 25, at Pelham Elementary School. The meeting begins at 7 p.m.
Voters will accept or reject the contract when they go to the polls on Tuesday, Oct. 23, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Pelham High School.
The warrant article they rejected in March called for increases of $392,033 in 2007-08, $396,307 in 2008-09, and $413,038 in 2009-10.
Bruce Couture, chairman of the School Board, said residents who want stability in their tax rate should approve the contract this fall, rather than letting the teachers go to March without a contract.
“It really wasn’t up to us to consider it an emergency,” Couture said of the request for a special meeting. “We presented our case to the court and they deemed it an emergency. So we acted accordingly.”
Voting to support the contract were Robert Sherman, Philip McColgan and Eleanor Burton, the School Board’s representative to the Budget Committee.
Voting against recommending it were Lavallee, Greg Farris, Larry Hall, Dan Guimond, Marti Lowe, Joe Puddister, and Ed Gleason, the board of selectmen’s representative.
Dennis Viger, whose wife is a Pelham teacher, abstained from voting.