The Harford County Board of Education has signed tentative labor agreements providing 3% cost of living increases for all school employees next year, plus step and longevity raises for eligible workers, that together will cost $15,326,618 in FY12, according to Teri Kranefeld, manager of communications for HCPS.
Representing the county’s 3,200 teachers, the Harford County Education Association (HCEA) negotiated the 3% COLA increase in a deal that was reached in January and made public last week. The HCEA agreement automatically triggered the same 3% COLA for all other school employee contracts, per piggyback clauses contained in their respective negotiated agreements. All COLA, step and longevity increases are subject to funding availability.
The school system has requested a total increase of $23 million from Harford County Government for next year and budgeted for flat funding from the state. County Executive David Craig is expected to release his proposed FY12 budget on April 1.
But in an ominous sign for next year’s budget, Craig formally requested on February 9 that all outside agencies, including the school system, return 3% of county funding from the current fiscal year. The 3% giveback was also applied to county government departments.
The school system’s FY11 county allocation was $214 million, meaning the 3% giveback would have amounted to $6.2 million. But in order to remain in compliance with the state’s maintenance of effort requirement, HCPS is expected to return only $3 million.
Harford County Education Association – Tentative Agreement Highlights
In addition to the 3% COLA, step and longevity increases for next year, HCEA negotiated a new health plan option featuring the benefits that were in effect on June 30, 2010. Subsequent changes to the healthcare plan had prompted angry protests from hundreds of employees and resulted in grievances filed by employee bargaining units, who argued that health plan changes should have been negotiated. School Board President Mark Wolkow promised at the time that healthcare would be negotiated in the future. The new option (with the old benefits) requires employees to pay 15% of the premium cost, with HCPS paying 85%. The existing HMO and PPN options require a 10% premium contribution from employees.
The tentative, 2011-12 teachers’ contract continues to allow HCEA to communicate with members through the school system’s courier and e-mail services, but adds a requirement that copies be provided to the HCPS communications office at the time of distribution. A year ago in January, HCEA President Randy Cerveny filed a grievance against HCPS when his email account was shut down following his call for teachers to protest salary cuts at school board meetings. Within weeks, Ceveny’s email account was restored and the HCEA grievance was dropped, with both sides agreeing to adhere to the language of the negotiated agreement, now amended to require copies to the school system.
Also new to the 2011-12 tentative agreement is a provision giving teachers the right to respond in writing to documents placed in their files, and the right to have an HCEA representative present when appearing before the superintendent to discuss suspension or dismal.
The text of the tentative 2011-12 agreement between HCEA and the Harford County Board of Education appears below. The tentative agreement amends the current negotiated agreement, and together they constitute the entire tentative contract for 2011-12.
This is great news for all of our “hard working” teachers and staff in Harford County!! Good job!!Only if they could get rid of the unions like Wisconsin!! Then they could get rid of the tenure and give a bigger increase to the ones that deserve it!!!
There continues to be this misconception that tenure does not allow school systems to separate ineffective teachers. All that tenure guarentees a teacher is due process rights regarding disciplinary and tremination proceedings. Teacher unions serve as the bulwark to protect teachers due process rights against abuses or unfair practices by school administrations. Unions are the equivilant of the court system in making sure that law enforcement does not violate your Constitutional rights, but do so at the administrative level. History has shown that it is the abuses of management that make unions necessary for the protection of their members. Please remember that union members are your neighbors, average people who are not the enemy, certainly not members of the economic elite.
And as you so plainly state, management is actually your enemy.
Right.
“Unions are the equivilant of the court system in making sure that law enforcement does not violate your Constitutional rights.”
Right.
No thanks; I don’t subscribe to that twisted and distorted view. Some of us with minds of our own and extra dollars in our pockets that we aren’t paying to our union daddies don’t need someone to ‘protect’ us from management, who in fact are our “neighbors, average people who are not the enemy”.
I never said management was the enemy. There are many fine people in management and when company ownership is small the relationship between management and labor is usually very good because they recognize each other as real people. The problem comes when companies are large and that personal contact is lost. Then people become nothing more than a commodity factored into the bottom line just like a raw material needed to make the finished product. It is greed or pressure from stockholders to maximize return on investment that turns people into numbers to be manipulated for the purpose of meeting that bottom line. It is this type of management that labor seeks protection from by forming unions. Go back to the Captains of Industry or the Robber Barons if you prefer. The term you used was dependent on what side of the receiving end you were on. I am all for Capitalism but there must be some protections offered to labor as history has repeatedly demonstrated from the time of the First Industrial Revolution that workers will be abused by management if left to their own devices and not checked by organized labor, or in some cases the Federal government. Have unions sometimes overstepped their bounds – certainly. But an honest comparison usually finds labor getting the short end of the stick.
TR – You sound pretty reasonable and pragmatic to me. The first comment above you seems like something you might hear on one of those 24 hour “News” programs. I am getting pretty tired of the extreme right and left commentary. It is time the pragmatists took over this conversation. Keep posting!
@Decoydude. There are no 24 hour “news” programs anymore. They have hall adopted the kabuki theater format and are now in the “entertainment” business.
Retiredawhile – Good point and well said!
It is also not news when they don’t report any facts and spend hours giving you their opinion as if it was fact.
It is good to know that there are still some free thinking people around here. I appreciate the intellectual honesty. It is a refreshing break from the usual complaining, ranting and raving of some of the all too regular fringe lunatics.
Retirededawhile, it may be helpful if you either explained the sustainability and benefits of year after year growth in Havre de Grace city government or alternatively you can peel onions to their cores.
I see that I was too premature praising pragmatic civil discourse. My advice to the angry posters who want to divide this country, state and county: take up something relaxing like fishing or yoga. Angry, divisive attack speech is not resolving any of our issues. It really turns off many independent voters who are already sick of most of this nonsense.
This a really old deal that, to be fair, David Craig had nothing to do with. That is unless he funds the BOE at the level they requested.
This deal will have to be redone anyway. I suspect the release of this information was timed to garner support after the TEA PARTIE’S show of force at the council meeting 2/1/2011.
As you know HCPS employee negotiations are held in closed session which is fine but take a close look at the timing of the votes.
. That deal was struck in January according to the article. That was before the BOE publicly voted on the Superintendent’s budget and before public testimony was heard. This is public knowledge.
How could a board member, who already voted to fund the raises, turn around and vote to oppose the budget that was sent to the County Executive?
If you recall Rick Grambo was the only BOE Board member to vote “NO” on the budget.
Fell free to give me a call if you like:
Tony Passaro
443-350-0520
The other BOE members were smart enough to realize that Craig would not fund their budget request so no one should have been surprised or gotten excited about the initial budget vote. The real work on the school budget will start when Craig gives the BOE the actual dollar figure he is willing to fund. Don’t forget that Bob Frisch (the other elected Board member) got an amendment passed which actually cut over $200,000 from the budget.
What is the point in agreeing negotiating and agreeing to a contract that depends on others to fund? There isn’t the political will or economic wherewithal to support this kind of raise of 24 MILLION DOLLARS over last years budget. The county is projected to take in less money from assessments, state transportation funds, income tax and transfer taxes. Is case you didn’t know, the county does not have the FED banking ability to just raise money out of the blue. Other depts within the county have been warned to keep the budgets in line with last year and some reductions will happen as the county now added an auditor dept by the county council which will have to get funded too. The big elephant in the room is what to do about the Council Building and the projected raise in health care costs as they seemingly increase every year. In fact, this years budget may be the most challeging in Craig’s term. If the schools sytem gets a raise, then other county govt employees would deserve the same treatment and I just don’t see that happenning this year. The HCPS and school teachers will be out in force to demand their contract be honored by a party (the county) which was not a part to the negotiations in the first place. No wonder people don’t think govt can really function in the real world. An employer would never be asked to fund a contract that the company never participated in negotiating in the first place.
Your first leadoff question is an interesting one most people unless they teach, have taught or are married to a teacher do not understand. Negotiations always work this way. They start before they have a final number from the county so they make a budget. Those deals are contingent on budgeting request being funded by the county exec and council. If they get less then they must renegotiate on that number.
the request is for 23 million more than last year. I don’t know how is good faith did HCPS negotiate a contract without knowning how much $$$$ they are getting from the county? This is just a ploy by the parties to put pressure on the CE and County council to fund as much as possible of their request. If you add the TEA party to the mix, it should be an interesting April and May at the Dagger. CDEV start to grease you keyboard!!!!.