BOE-REA Negotiations
Click here to read a Letter to the Editor of The Ridgewood News, which appeared in the paper on February 12, 2016.Click here to read the Ridgewood Board of Education’s Fact-Finding Presentation with the The Ridgewood Education Association.
Click here to view the backup for the Ridgewood Board of Education’s Fact-Finding Presentation with The Ridgewood Education Association.
BOE Meets on March 7 at 7:30 p.m.
The Ridgewood Board of Education will hold a Regular Public Meeting on Monday, March 7, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.
The public is invited to attend the meeting at the Ed Center, 49 Cottage Place, Floor 3. The meeting may also be viewed on FiOS channel 33, Optimum channel 77 or from computers via the “Live BOE Meeting” tab on the district website.FiOS channel 33, Optimum channel 77 or from computers via the “Live BOE Meeting” tab on the district website.
Click here to view the agenda for the February 22, 2016 Regular Public Meeting.
Click here to view the minutes of the February 8, 2016 Regular Public Meeting.
The unions sure all seem to think the state and municipalities can afford “platinum” health benefit coverage which covers 95% of all essential care with low deductibles and $5-15 copays. For that public workers are paying 35% or less of the premiums. From 2020 those plans will also be subject to a 40% excise tax and who pays for that? Well according to the unions like NJEA and our local PBA, taxpayers should pay that in addition to subsidizing their platinum coverage.
Most large private sector employers offer “bronze” level equivalent coverage with higher co-pays and higher deductibles. It’s time for all public sector workers to face this same reality; taxpayers cannot afford to subsidize your platinum level benefits anymore. Here in Ridgewood the REA and the PBA refuse to accept this and claim were not being “fair”? Let’s be honest: platinum level health benefits for the select few, paid for by the rest of us, are what is not fair. It’s time for these unions -and their full-time labor lawyers from the state unions behind the curtains – to negotiate with the Village in good faith, instead of these hostile negotiations over platinum health benefits.
Ridgewood NJ, “Not As Good as You Think: Why Middle-Class Parents in New Jersey Should Be Concerned About Their Local Public Schools,” a report produced by the Pacific Research Institute analyzing academic performance at 1,170 Garden State public schools, says plenty of middle class suburban kids aren’t college ready!
FEBRUARY 12, 2016 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2016, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
BOE highlights memorandum
Click here to read the Fact Finding Report between the Ridgewood Board of Education and the REA dated February 3, 2016.
To the Editor,
At our Feb. 8 Board of Education meeting, our teachers voiced concerns about the unsettled contract and the Board’s recent proposal. It was evident that the information they were given about the Board’s proposal was incorrect.
The Board and the Ridgewood Education Association Negotiations committees have met 12 times since February 2015. Unfortunately, we have failed to settle the contract. On Wednesday, Feb. 3, a hearing was held before the state-appointed Fact-finder. At the hearing, the Board summarized its position and the current proposal in a memorandum. The bullet points below highlight the key areas discussed in our memorandum. The full memorandum can be found on the District’s website at ridgewood.k12.nj.us.
Key areas in the Board’s Fact-finding memorandum:
The Board has based its negotiating position on the realities of a state law, Chapter 44, which limits local school boards to annual property tax increases of no more than two percent over the previous year’s dollar amounts, with some limited exceptions.
Ridgewood teacher salaries are at, or near the top of, salaries paid for similarly qualified staff in other Bergen County school districts.
The Board currently spends over $7 million per year, or approximately 74 percent of the premium bill, for REA health benefits. The Board has not proposed to increase the teachers’ share of the health benefit premiums.
Health benefit premiums have increased on average by 10 percent annually for the past 10 years.
The Board has proposed changing the health benefits plan within the current provider program (the School Employees Health Benefits Plan) to one with higher co-pays — $10 doctor visit co-pay in the current plan rising to $15 per primary care doctor visit and $25 for specialists — as a way to save both the District and teachers on premium costs.
Breakage, or any savings due to retirements, is not a reasonable way to fund a settlement. Historically, the Board has spent any such savings on new hires or on salary increases for existing teachers as they complete graduate courses and higher education degrees.
State aid for rapidly rising special education costs has decreased in the last three years.
The District’s architect and engineering firm completed a facility review and recommended facility upgrades/repairs of approximately $40 million. The capital reserve account balance as of June 30, 2015 was $1,018,989, far short of what is needed to update our 11 buildings constructed between 1894 and 1965.
Many of the comments from teachers were critical of the Board and mischaracterized us as uncaring and indifferent. The Board values our staff. We would never see our teachers as “numbers on a spreadsheet.” We are well aware of the work our staff does and that it is this work that makes Ridgewood the excellent district that it is. The Board is committed to negotiating a fair contract with the REA that can be funded within the District’s financial ability.
FEBRUARY 12, 2016 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2016, 12:31 AM
BY MATTHEW SCHNEIDER
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
RIDGEWOOD – A large number of teachers once again took the stand during Monday’s Board of Education (BOE) meeting, enumerating the various reasons why they feel a fair contract must be reached between the BOE and Ridgewood Education Association (REA).
Despite protracted negotiations, an agreement still has yet to be hammered out, causing much concern on both sides.
Although the BOE has continuously said that it values its educators and recognizes the necessity of their work, many teachers remain unconvinced.
Some, like Kim Casey, of Travell Elementary School, said they still feel like they are only figures on a spreadsheet.
“To you, I am merely a number,” she stated. “To you I am merely … the numbers of years I have before retirement, when you can fill my position with a younger teacher who won’t cost the taxpayers as much money.”
Others, like teacher Andrea Petron, of Ridge Elementary School, said they feel like teachers are an indispensible part of Ridgewood schools, and that the BOE has not treated them fairly.
“After pouring our hearts and souls into the district, it is important to know that we are appreciated and respected for the work we do,” she said. “Education is not a business, and it should not be treated as such.
“Teachers literally create every profession in the world,” she continued. “Teaching is the fundamental basis of every facet of society. It is time for you to start treating us like the rest of the world could not go on without us, including Ridgewood.”
FEBRUARY 10, 2016, 6:49 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2016, 6:57 PM
BY STEVE JANOSKI
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — The Board of Education and the Ridgewood Education Association remain locked in their inability to come to terms on a new teachers’ contract, despite the efforts of a state-appointed fact finder.
Members of the REA, cloaked in red to show solidarity, crowded into a school board meeting Monday night for the second time this month to decry the lack of progress in negotiations. Although there are numerous points of contention, the sharpest disagreement has come over how much REA members must contribute to their health-insurance premiums.
REA President Michael Yannone, a 19-year veteran of Ridgewood High School, said Monday the board’s position in a Feb. 3 fact-finding meeting was reduced to two points: The district had no additional money to spend on teacher salaries, and no other New Jersey school district had agreed to a reduction in healthcare contributions, because that would be “unaffordable.”
Yannone said neither was true. A number of districts had negotiated reductions in healthcare contributions, he said, and an influx of state aid and health contribution money — combined with under-budgeting in certain areas — had led to a sizable surplus in the local school budget.
Let’s be very clear about this, this is all about the money and the greed of the REA and their full-time paid lawyers and lobbyists from the NJEA. They are trying to squeeze more blood out of Ridgewood taxpayers for what are already among the most expensive teacher salaries and health benefits in the entire nation That’s right, we pay $100M a year for our public schools in a Village of 25,000 people. If they don’t like paying for their health benefits then they are welcome to get a job in the private sector or another school district.
The BoE must not roll over here despite the threats, bullying and personal and vindictive attacks they are facing from the REA/NJEA. As Bob knows personally, these bullies are not negotiating in good faith, they are trying to squeeze as much as they can from taxpayers. The education of our children is the furthest thing from their minds.
A New York teacher who investigators say had sex with a student was able to exploit loopholes and delays in the disciplinary system to land a teaching job in New Jersey, The Post has learned.
Jinwoo Seong, 36, repeatedly grabbed a male student’s crotch, exposed himself, had the youth stroke him and engaged in oral sex while a special-education math teacher at Martin Van Buren HS in Queens, according to an explosive eight-page report by special schools investigator Richard Condon. The student cried throughout an interview with investigators.
Seong also touched a girl’s breast and crotch over her clothes, slapped other boys’ butts, hurled obscene comments and made “gay jokes,” the probe found.
One girl told investigators that Seong asked her to measure a classmate’s penis during an after-school tutoring session. Another boy claimed Seong kicked him in the testicles when he cursed the teacher.
But Seong, who was fired, managed to get a new job in Jersey simply by not revealing his troubled past. The case shows how a teacher accused of shocking misconduct can slip through bureaucratic cracks and back into the classroom.
Condon’s nine-month investigation ended last Sept. 28 with a letter to Chancellor Carmen Fariña, saying Seong “has no place in New York City schools.”
But Seong, who was assigned to a “rubber room” pending the probe, remained on the city payroll until the Department of Education terminated him on Nov. 30. The untenured Seong denied the charges but was not entitled to an administrative trial.
Seong used his time in the rubber room to scramble for new employment. In October, New Jersey granted his application to recognize his New York certifications to teach special-ed and math in grades 7 to 12.
Seong then found an opening at Don Bosco Technical Academy, a public middle school in Paterson, NJ, telling officials he wanted to “relocate.” As soon as his NYC firing was official, he accepted the $62,000-a-year position. He started on Dec. 7.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) says real education reform is impossible as long as teachers unions remain a powerful force for the status quo.
“The single most destructive force for public education in this country is the teachers union,” Christie said at a Jack Kemp Foundation panel discussion in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday. “It is the single most destructive force.”
The Republican presidential candidate called the labor groups an “absolute subsidiary of the Democratic Party.”
“In New Jersey alone, the teachers union has 200,000 members, and they collect mandatory dues of $730 per person per year,” he said. “That’s $140 million that the teachers union just in New Jersey collects a year, and they pay nothing toward teacher salary, teacher pension or teachers healthcare.
“It’s a $140 million political slush fund to be able to reward their friends and punish their enemies,” he added. “Now imagine that kind of force and it’s replicated in state after state after state in this country.”
Christie said Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is “bought and paid for” by the unions. Clinton has been endorsed by the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the nation.
The governor also called the current mode of education “obsolete” and said schools need to incorporate innovative technologies into the classroom.
DECEMBER 31, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2015, 10:51 AM
BY CAITLYN BAHRENBURG AND ROBERT CHRISTIE
STAFF WRITER |
NORTHERN VALLEY SUBURBANITE
Teachers were tired of being insulted, Old Tappan Education Association President Matt Capilli said.
So, residents, students and faculty members gathered up their signs and congregated outside of the Charles De Wolf Middle School to picket in act of solidarity with the union.
The Old Tappan teachers’ union, like many others across the state, entered the new academic year without a contract.
According to statistics provided by the New Jersey School Boards Association, which “provides training, advocacy and support to advance public education and the achievement of all students through effective governance” according to its website, almost one-third of the 579 public school districts in New Jersey started the year in the same position as Old Tappan. In Bergen County, 12 district started the year without a contract.
“Negotiations are difficult everywhere right now, so I think it’s really important to show support for our brother and sister school districts,” said Jim McGuire, president of the Northern Valley Education Association, the union that represents the educators at the regional high schools in Demarest and Old Tappan.
McGuire was one of many supporters at an Old Tappan Rally Nov. 17 to show support for the teachers and urge the local board of education to reach a deal with its unionized staff.
But, McGuire’s comment was visible in several districts in the region that did not have contracts for its unionized teachers.
Before reaching an agreement in November, the Tenafly Education Association boycotted the district’s annual Back to School Nights in September.
The nights give parents a chance to meet wit their children’s teachers.
Tenafly Education Association president, Jackie Wellman, said the boycott was meant to send a message to the district.
“A program is rendered useless when quality staff is missing,” said Wellman, who is a teacher at the Stillman Elementary School in Tenafly, in a previous interview with the Northern Valley Suburbanite explaining the reasons behind the boycotts.
Unions took other steps to highlight its memberships’ displeasure with not having a contract.
These job action tactics, said Ridgewood Education Association President Michael Yannone, are the result of a change in options teachers or districts have to reach a new deal when working under an expired contract.
“Back in the day, the threat of a strike for both sides was a good thing,” Yannone said.
Strikes by public employees, including teachers, have been illegal in New Jersey since the 1960s, though, private employees can strike, with the understanding that their actions remain legal.
All trick, no treat: NJEA dumps $750k more into Super PAC (for the kids)
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
You and I both know that the NJEA doesn’t give a damn about the kids, Save Jerseyans.
It’s a business. A big money business. Keeping the money train rolling requires spending big money to keep the Democrats in power all while our state’s most vulnerable kids get left behind.
They’re setting records this election cycle. The General Majority PAC,smearing GOP candidates all over the state, is on track to spend close to $4 million this cycle, or roughly 20% of all spending, direct and independent expenditures, throughout the Garden State in key legislative districts. The NJEA is helping bankroll it.
Republican candidates John Mitchell, Ken Tyburczy and Daisy Ortiz-Berger
Democrats have raised nearly seven times more than GOP challengers in Bergen Freeholder race
OCTOBER 30, 2015, 7:23 PM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2015, 2:15 PM
BY JOHN C. ENSSLIN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
As the race for three seats on the Bergen County Board of Freeholders winds down, campaign spending reports show that the three Democratic incumbents have raised nearly seven times more than their Republican challengers.
Democratic Freeholders Steve Tanelli, Tracy Zur and Thomas Sullivan had raised about $434,654 according to reports released on Thursday by the state Election Law Enforcement Commission.
Republican candidates John Mitchell, Ken Tyburczy and Daisy Ortiz-Berger had raised about $62,132 during the same period.
Democrats currently hold a 5-2 majority on the board. Republicans would have to sweep all three seats to regain control.
The reports show that Sullivan, president of Local 164 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, was the top fund-raiser among all the freeholder candidates.
His individual campaign reported $126,210 in contributions, many from labor unions such as the New Jersey Building and Construction Trades Council, which contributed $1,500.
Zur, a former municipal judge from Franklin Lakes, raised $98,430 and Tanelli, a former North Arlington councilman, raised $24,532.
The New Jersey Education Association has been the driving force behind the General Majority PAC’s roughly $2 million campaign effort on behalf of Assembly candidates in the first and second legislative districts, contributing $3 million to the independent group. JT Aregood, PolitickerNJ Read more
A new report from a Wall Street rating agency warns that Gov. Chris Christie’s seemingly dormant plan to overhaul government worker pension and health benefits to save the state billions of dollars could come at a risk to school districts if Christie’s proposed reforms don’t play out as envisioned. Samantha Marcus, NJ.com Read more
The following letter appeared in The Ridgewood News on October 16, 2015.
To the Editor: At our October 5th Board of Education meeting and in last week’s letters to the editor, several of our teachers voiced opposition to the employee healthcare premium contributions phased in over the last four years under state law, known as Chapter 78. We would like to clarify the information on the healthcare contribution. The rates by which Ridgewood teachers contribute to their individual healthcare premiums is determined by a graduated structure, with employees at higher end of salary grades paying a greater percentage of their individual premiums than those at the lower end.
The highest paid teachers contribute 35 percent of their plans’ premiums while the lowest paid teachers pay 12 percent. The contribution level of 35 percent is applied to salaries of $95,000 and above when the employee has single coverage and $110,000 and above when the employee chooses family coverage. The majority of our teachers are enrolled in the School Employee Health Benefits Plan NJ Direct 10. At present, premiums are $10,610 for single coverage and $29,177 for family coverage.
The teacher who earns $95,000 and has single coverage would contribute $3,713 and a teacher earning $110,000 enrolled in the family plan would contribute $10,212. This year the total health insurance premium cost for the REA members is $10,228,960. Of that amount, they contribute $2,628,843. The net health insurance cost to the district is $7,600,117. With insurance premiums increasing annually, sometimes dramatically, controlling the growth of health care costs is challenging for all employers, in both the public and private sectors.
With the legislated 2 percent cap on property tax increases, keeping the school district’s overall costs within the cap is particularly challenging when cost drivers such as healthcare grow at a rate in excess of 2 percent. This year, the district offered employees 20 different plans through the School Employee Health Benefit Plan. Some of these plans have lower premiums. With lower premiums, the amount spent on insurance and the contribution cost would decrease.
The Board respects our teachers and appreciates the work they do. We share their concerns about rising healthcare costs as well as the increasing demands brought about by state mandates and our collective efforts to improve and update our curricula and programs. We know that through their great work our students thrive and our school district is well respected. Our appreciation is demonstrated in their compensation. Our teachers’ average salary of $82,500 is near the top of all Bergen County districts, while our starting salary of $55,693 for a first-year teacher with a Bachelors of Arts degree is at the very top (based upon collective bargaining agreements on file at the New Jersey School Board Association). Currently, 107 of our 520 teachers earn $100,000 or more. As stated at the Board meeting, our negotiating team is willing to meet with the REA team to settle the contract.
Ridgewood Board of Education
Sheila Brogan, President Vincent Loncto, Vice President Christina Krauss Jim Morgan Jennie Smith Wilson
