Come down to Earth
We hope by the time these words reach readers an agreement is reached between Peters Township School District and its teachers to end the strike that began last Wednesday morning, but we’re not counting on it. Even after 17 negotiating sessions, the sides are still light years apart, and the strike is likely to be long and nasty.
During the years Peters Township was growing from a mostly rural township into Washington County’s most populated municipality, its public schools benefited from the flow of tax revenue from one new development of high-end homes after another. The growth kept tax rates low, even as Peters schools became the best equipped and its teachers the highest paid in the county.
Growth has its limits, however, and Peters Township reached them a few years ago. Consequently, residents who enjoyed year after year with no increase in school taxes saw their annual tax bills rise. The chickens had come home to roost.
The school board decided it’s time to hold the line on spending, and that is clearly evident in its latest offer to teachers. It is asking teachers pay a larger portion of their health insurance, increasing from $70 to $110 per month the contribution for single coverage, rising to $150 in the final year of the contract, and from $145 to an eventual $345 for family coverage.
Considering the escalating cost of health-care coverage to the district, this is a reasonable expectation. But at the same time, the district is offering paltry salary increases: $500 annual salary increases for the life of the contract to teachers on steps 1-16 and $200 to those on step 17. That means most of the teachers’ pay after health-care deductions would remain about the same as it is now through the length of the contract. This is unrealistic when the district is also asking teachers to work 30 minutes longer each day and work four more days each year.
Teachers, on the other hand, are not likely to get much support from the public. They are already earning, on average, $71,540 a year, with the highest-paid teachers getting $104,864.
In the latest offer made public, the union is seeking $2,500 annual raises for all teachers for the life of the contract, as well as additional pay in the form of stipends if class size exceeds a certain number of students. It also wants full medical coverage for retired teachers until they are eligible for Medicare at age 65, with no contribution from retirees, and wants no increase in active teachers’ health-care contributions.
The district estimates the union’s proposed salary increases alone would cost $7 million.
There are quite a number of Peters residents who will receive no increase in Social Security payments in 2016 because there has been little change in the cost of living. And many of them are baby boomers who can recall sitting in elementary classrooms of typically 35 students. They might wonder at the idea of paying a bonus to a third-grade teacher whose class size exceeds 22, for example.
This strike is likely to drag on, and the big losers will be students, idle now but likely to be in class on Christmas Eve and well into June.
To end the impasse, the district will have to realize if it insists teachers work longer, it will have to pay them more, and teachers will have to come back down to Earth and realize this is not 1975, when inflation was spiraling. It’s 2015, and the average Western Pennsylvanian would love to have the salary and benefits and pension opportunities Peters Township teachers already enjoy.