A lengthy negotiation session has failed to bring about an agreement between the Kings Park Classroom Teachers Association and the Kings Park Central School District.
According to attorney John Gross, of Ingerman Smith, counsel for the school district, both sides met on March 6, along with a new third party negotiator in a process called superconcilliation. According to Gross, a deal was thought to be in the works, but then stalled. Four points remained at issue, with salary structure, according to Gross, being the biggest concern.
“I thought we had a deal regarding salary and the salary schedule but that was not the case,” said Gross in a phone interview.
According to records obtained by Patch, a teacher in the district, on average, earns $99,397, not including health care benefits or retirement. Teachers in the district have been working under an expired contract, which they have done for the past three years, and under the Taylor Law and Triborough Amendment the agreements in the expired contract stay in place until a new contract is agreed upon.
Under that contract, teachers receive annual step increases, in addition to credit for additional courses they complete.
A first year teacher in Kings Park with a Bachelor’s Degree will receive $43,043 on step one. Step two brings a starting salary to $47,826, an increase of 11.1 percent. Step three is an increase of 4.99 percent, bringing salary to $50,217 for a starting teacher with a bachelor's degree. Teachers who receive additional schooling such as Graduate Degrees and continuing education classes will receive additional increases as they complete course work.
Jim Pappas, president of the Kings Park Classroom Teachers Association, said the average salary is inflated due to the loss of newer teachers, who are brought in at a lower wage.
“Something to be taken into account by everybody is that we’ve lost 60 teachers over the past five years and those are the newer teachers who make less,” said Pappas in a phone interview. “The starting salary is $43,000. When you start throwing those out of the mix, you raise the average salary.”
Pappas, who plans on retiring in October, estimates that the teaching staff at Kings Park has decreased by sixteen to seventeen-percent in the past five years.
“Most other districts haven’t laid off as many,” said Pappas. “They (other districts) talk about lay-offs and then find the money to put them back.”
In a Meet the Candidate event held Thursday evening, trustees Liz Barrett and Tom Locascio, who are both up for re-election, say that the board and district has gone line-by-line looking for cost savings in the lines that they can control.
“The district is contractually bound to a salary schedule that I believe our community can no longer afford,” said Locascio in a phone interview.
Both sides say they are hopeful that an agreement is on the horizon, but Pappas said in reality an agreement is not so close. Board trustee Tom Locascio has called the issue of salary, “one of the biggest challenges we are facing.”
“We are trying to do the best we can for both sides,” said Pappas. “We understand the economic conditions. We are not oblivious to that, but we have to look towards the future and what is best for the membership and we thought we were doing that.”
Talks are expected to resume on May 22.
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