For the second time in five years, the Belle Vernon Area School District will begin a new fiscal year without an agreement with its teachers. The district’s five-year labor contract with the Belle Vernon Area Education Association expired at midnight Wednesday. The union represents about 170 instructors and other professionals in the district’s five schools. School board President Aaron Bialon said directors signed a document earlier this year pledging not to discuss the status of negotiations in public, but he offered one comment about the bargaining process. “I have one word to say on behalf of the board of directors and to the taxpayers of the district, and that’s ‘frustrating,'” Bialon said. The district has had occasional meetings with union leaders since winter, but the last session was several weeks ago. Craig Apessos, president of the Belle Vernon Area Education Association, was not available for comment. School directors voted 9-0 Tuesday night to adopt a $26.23 million budget that takes effect today. The 2004-05 spending plan, which slightly reduces the real-estate tax rates in four of the district’s five municipalities, allots about $8.5 million for salaries connected to instruction. That figure is $15,410 less than the district paid in salaries for instruction in the 2002-03 school year and $125,844 less than it spent last year. Superintendent Robert Nagy has acknowledged that 17 or 18 positions have been eliminated within the past year. The district finds itself in the same spot as in July 1999, when the previous labor contract ended. After more than a year of negotiations and the brief threat of a strike, a majority of union members and the school board approved a contract in February 2000. Four years ago, the ratified pact boosted the average annual salary by 4.3 percent.

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