Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Bargaining Update-October 26, 2005

The bargaining teams from both side met tonight in full table bargaining. Your HEA bargaining team made their offical proposal that included moving to fully paid MESSA Choices II. The Board team's response occured within 30 minutes by rejecting our offer and countering with a twenty-page document that included a cap on insurance as well as a freesze on salary and 1/2 steps.

The board also presented a new regressive proposal that guts the current contract language on class size, prep time, length of the school day, overload pay and calendar. This proposal would increase class size as much as five students per class at some grade levels and overload pay would be based on groups of students instead of a per student calculation.

Your bargaining team was outraged by the board's new proposal because we were lead to believe at our last mediation session that with our new proposal we would be close to the target needed to reach an agreement. Tonight that target moved again.

We do have another mediation sesssion scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, 10/27/05 at 4:30 P.M.

We will provide another bargaining update by e-mail at the conclusion of tomorrow's session. An HEA general membership meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, November 1, 2005 at 5:00 P.M. in the HS auditorum (tentative location).

In unity there's strength.

Your Bargaining Team