Board and Teachers Union at an impasse

By TOM KANE

CALLICOON — Joe Dayton, president of the Sullivan West Teachers Union, was accompanied by 40 district teachers at a meeting with the Sullivan-West school board last Thursday evening, January 4.

Dayton said he expected the board to accept the union’s latest offer for a new contract, but this did not happen.

Prior to the tri-school merger, which took place in 1999, all three schools had their own union and union contract. Now, there is only one union, no new contract and a disparity of pay scales among the three schools. Sullivan West at Delaware Valley (SW/DV) teachers have been without a contract for two years, according to Dayton.

The new union is part of the New York State United Teachers Union, as were the former three unions.

“We’ve had tremendous progress in our meetings with union officials,” said board president Carol Nearing, reading from a prepared statement, “but a few things are still in dispute.”

Nearing said the school board wanted to have a contract in place for the opening of school, but the union rejected its offer. On November 14, the two sides met with a mediator, but with no result.

“We want the leadership of both sides to take the necessary steps,” Nearing said.

“The principle behind our negotiations is that we want the teachers of all three schools to be on the same level,” Dayton said.

He explained that the Sullivan West at Jeffersonville-Youngsville (SW/JY) teachers’ present contract mandates a two-percent raise every year for the length of the contract, which will end in one and a half years. He wants to bring teachers at the SW/DV and Narrowsburg campuses up to where the Sw/JY teachers are.

“About one half of the teachers of the new district are going on old contracts,” Dayton said. “We’re not asking for an increase but are asking that all the teachers be brought up to the same level,” he said. “We’re trying to be fair.”

“A building alone will not make us one district,” the DV union vice president told the board. “We need a contract.”

Nearing explained that the next step was for the negotiations to go before a fact-finder and then be resolved.

“We may have a solution before that stage,” said Michael Johndrow, school district superintendent.

In other school board matters, architect Mark Lippi of the Hillier Company, and building consultant Luis Rodriquez of the Turner Company, displayed the newest design of the proposed high school building.

“On Monday, we are presenting the final drawings to the State Education Department (SED) for its approval,” Lippi said. The process of approval could take as much as nine weeks, he said.

“The project is on schedule and on budget,” Rodriquez said.

The renovation of the three old building will be discussed at next month’s meeting on January 18, and “We hope to have the final drawings for the renovations to SED by February 1,” Lippi said.

“In the short time frame they had, the engineers have brought the project along nicely,” said Buck Moorhead, a resident architect who has followed the project closely.