DALLAS TWP. — Negotiation meetings continue with no apparent resolution in sight, as the Dallas School Board rejected another union proposal while the March 5 strike date is changed again, school attorney Vito DeLuca said Wednesday.
It was a short meeting where the Dallas Education Association President Michael Cherinka and John Holland of the Pennsylvania State Education Association presented the Dallas School Board with an intent to strike date change from March 5 to April 13 and another proposal.
“The strike date was changed before the meeting,” Cherinka said. “We filed an unfair labor practice and are waiting for that to play out.”
The unfair labor practice was filed by the union against the school board when the board did not agree to meet for a scheduled negotiation meeting in November 2017.
The union’s newest proposal did not make any progress with the school board.
“We immediately recognized it (the proposal) as something the district can’t afford,” he said.
The union’s proposal contained a healthcare plan redesign and a two percent raise on the sixth year of the teachers’ salary scale, DeLuca said.
The salary matrix is a wage scale based on a teacher’s years at the district and educational level.
The district’s proposed salary scale from the Feb. 13 negotiations offered a minimum annual salary of $46,000 and a maximum pay of $83,500. The salary schedule awards teachers a raise for each year (columns) up to 16 years and for every six college credits above a bachelor’s degree (steps) up to 36 credits beyond a master’s degree.
“The sixth year of the matrix already had a nice raise of 5 to 6 percent,” DeLuca said. “They were looking to add an additional two percent.”
The union’s healthcare offer, based on a 2016 analysis, would cost the district an estimated $30,000 a year, DeLuca said.
“It would actually cost the district more than their current plan,” DeLuca said. “My board asked them if an economic analysis was done on the proposal. Holland said — and I wrote this down — ‘you run the numbers. That’s not our job; that’s your job.’”
Union leaders cannot call the district’s third-party health care provider for a quote, Cherinka said.
“We gave them the proposal, and they have to take it to their provider,” Cherinka said.
The district’s Feb. 13 proposal did offer a choice of three healthcare plans, one without a premium share, and two cost-sharing plans.
One of the proposed health plans is a PPO that requires a premium of $11.34 for a single person or $31.40 for family coverage per pay period. Teachers are paid biweekly, or 26 times a year.
Another offer would keep the current HMO but includes a premium share of $31.19 for single coverage or $86.38 for a family.
DeLuca said the choice was an effort to meet the union’s demands on not paying one cent toward healthcare, as Cherinka voiced in 2016.
Cherinka used himself as an example and found he would pay more under the proposed free healthcare plan.
“It would offset any raise,” he said.
Two new negotiation meetings are slated for March 6 and 21.
