Neshaminy teachers promise calm Back to School Nights
No disruptions from union members, despite long contract impasse.
Neshaminy teachers will not allow their long contract impasse to intrude on their work in the classroom or to disrupt the district's Back to School Nights, union President Louise Boyd said Tuesday.
"We never planned any activity thay would disrupt them," Boyd said, citing warnings from Superintendent Louis Muenker against possible picketing. "The only [union] members will be the teachers in the buildings."
Boyd would not say whether teachers will be at the entrances to the three middle schools on Thursday, as they were a year ago, prompting objections from some parents.
"No union member ever made it uncomfortable" to attend the Back to School Nights," she said at a Neshaminy Federation of Teachers press conference at the union's Levittown offices.
Any teachers picketing on school grounds or who enter a school for business other than Back to School Night activities will be directed to leave, Muenker said after Tuesday night's school board meeting. He outlined that policy in a letter to the staff on Friday, he said.
Muenker wrote a similar letter last month, after teachers distributed union literature outside the site of a student orientation. On Aug. 26, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge against the school district, contending teachers should be allowed to hand out union literature on school grounds.
Back to School Nights are also scheduled Sept. 22 at the eight elementary schools, Oct. 20 at the high school and Oct. 20 at the Learning Center.
As for the contract impasse, which has entered the fourth school year, Boyd said teachers have offered $21 million in concessions over six years since making their May counterproposal.
The next negotiatoing session will be scheduled after financial experts for both sides reconcile differences in the costs of several proposals. That meeting is scheduled for Monday, Boyd said.
The union's 650 members have not received a raise since the 2007-08 school year. They also have not contributed to their health-care premiums, but the union has proposed contributing 8 percent of this year's premiums for each of the next three years. The district has countered with a 15 percent contribution.