The five-year contract dispute between the Somerset Area School District and its teachers union could end this week.
"I am happy to say that we're getting real close," James Cascio, a school board member and the district's chief negotiator, said Monday.
Cascio and board President John G. Coleman said the board's negotiating committee will meet Wednesday to discuss a contract proposal from the Somerset Area Education Association.
"We did, in fact, receive a proposal from the union, and at first inspection, it looks promising," Coleman said.
Neither Cascio nor Coleman would provide details of the contract, except for the proposed term.
"What they have proposed and we are going to consider is a deal that is going to go until 2009," Coleman said.
Mary Critchfield, president of the teachers association, did not return a call seeking comment. Scott Dunlap, the association's chief negotiator, could not be reached for comment last night.
According to Cascio, it is a counteroffer to the proposal made by the board in November, which the union rejected. He said if the negotiating committee approves it, the board likely would call a special meeting to vote on it Friday night, the earliest possible time it could convene a legally advertised meeting.
"What we received and what I am going to take to the membership of my committee was approved by the union last week," Cascio said.
He said that approval authorized the broad terms of the proposal. But if the negotiating committee accepts it, the union membership still would have to formally ratify the agreement before it is taken to the school board, he said. Cascio said the union likely would meet early Friday to hold the ratification vote.
"We're hoping to try to move this along quickly," Coleman said.
The Somerset teachers have been without a contract since the last one expired in June 2000. Cascio said negotiations on a new contract began in January of that year. Since then, the teachers withheld their services three times but returned in compliance with Act 88, the state law governing teachers strikes and contract negotiations, Cascio said.
'We felt that our salary scale was high for the region, and we've been looking for participation in health-care expenses," Cascio said of the main issues. As the impasse grew longer, retroactivity of salary and benefits became an issue.
He said the board decided to stop approving tax increases in anticipation of the union approving a contract.
"The union was insisting on full retroactivity," Cascio said. "We were making offers, and we were taxing as if our offers were going to be accepted, and we were accumulating money. We decided that we were not going to raise money and then sock it away."
