Correction Feb. 5, 2010 — During contract negotiations with its teachers, Elizabethtown school board offered to reduce the teacher work year from 191 to 190 days. The district did not offer to reduce the length of the workday, as reported in the article below.
•••
Contract talks for Elizabethtown Area School District teachers are headed for fact-finding after both sides failed to reach an agreement on salaries, benefits and other major issues in 13 months of negotiations.
Elizabethtown Area Education Association notified the school board Jan. 29 that it has asked the state to appoint a fact-finder to try to resolve the impasse.
The fact-finder will listen to proposals from both sides and recommend a settlement that either side may accept or reject.
The process is expected to be completed by mid-April. If no agreement is reached by then, teachers could authorize a strike.
Elsewhere in Lancaster County, teacher negotiations are continuing in Eastern Lancaster County and Donegal school districts, whose contracts, like the E-town pact, expired last summer.
Talks also have begun in Manheim Central, Ephrata Area and Solanco school districts. Teacher contracts in those districts expire at the end of this school year.
Elizabethtown school board president Jamie Rowley said he was "very disappointed" that talks with teachers have reached the fact-finding stage.
Rowley said he met one on one with Elizabethtown teachers' union president Nancy Warble on Jan. 26 to try to reach a consensus on outstanding issues.
But he never had a chance to discuss the issues with other board members before the union requested fact-finding.
"Up until a week and a half ago, I thought we were making progress," Rowley said. "Now that that process has been put on hold, I'm not very optimistic."
A state teachers' union representative said E-town's 292 teachers have the lowest salaries in Lancaster County and are seeking to close the pay gap with their peers in a new multiyear contract.
But he said little progress has been made.
"We're really at an impasse," said Brian Koppenhaver, a union services representative for the Pennsylvania State Education Association who serves as the teachers' lead negotiator.
"We haven't gotten traction on much of anything."
E-town teachers rank last in the county among 16 school districts and the Intermediate Unit in terms of career earnings potential over 30 years, he said, based on their existing contract.
They also have the third-lowest starting salary in the county, at $39,521 per year; the longest work year, at 191 days; and the longest work day, at eight hours, Koppenhaver said.
The district is offering raises, he said, but the increases would be more than offset by proposed hikes in employee health care costs.
Teachers are being asked to pay higher co-pays for doctor's office and emergency room visits, bigger monthly health care premiums and a "significant increase" in the cost of coverage for spouses, Koppenhaver said.
He declined to provide more specifics.
Rowley disputed many of his characterizations.
The school board "was prepared to make a very, very competitive offer in light of other negotiated settlements" in other county school districts, he said.
"I do not think that increase would have been offset in any way by co-pays and deductibles."
Rowley also said the school board had offered to shorten the work day in the new contract.
Koppenhaver conceded that "it's a tough time to be bargaining" because of the weak economy.
"We are especially sensitive to the taxpayers of the community, but the truth of the matter is our teachers are hurting, too," he said.
"Of course, the perception out there is that if you're a teacher, you're earning a phenomenal amount of money and have great benefits."
The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board is expected to appoint a fact-finder for the district when it meets Feb. 16.
The fact-finder will attempt to mediate a settlement. If that fails, he or she would hold a hearing behind closed doors at which both sides would present arguments in support of their contract proposals.
The fact-finder would then issue a report, including a proposed salary schedule, no later than March 29 that school board members and teachers would have to vote on within 10 days.
If both sides accept the report, it would become the basis for a new contract.
If either side rejects it, the report would be released to the public and a second vote would take place within 10 days by the party that rejected it.
If the report is again rejected, teachers would have the option of returning to the bargaining table or striking.
The most recent teacher contact to be settled through fact-finding was in Columbia Borough School District in the fall.
That four-year pact, approved on first votes by both the school board and teachers' union, includes raises of 3.5 percent this year and next year and 3.8 percent in each of the final two years.
Other teacher contracts approved in recent months include similar pay hikes, along with increases in employee health care costs.
In November, Hempfield approved a contract that boosts teacher pay an average 3.725 percent a year, and Cocalico approved a new pact in September with pay hikes averaging 3.78 percent.