Pay Raises for Teachers On Town Meeting Agenda

FALLS VILLAGE — There’s more on the agenda for the Jan. 23 town meeting than the controversial granting of an easement to the Falls Village Children’s Theater Company. Also up for a vote will be whether to approve or reject a new contract for teachers at the Lee H. Kellogg School.

The new four-year agreement will begin July 1, 2007, if approved. Board of Education Chair Andrea Downs told The Lakeville Journal in an e-mail that the plan calls for salary increases of 3.8 percent in the first year and 3.9 percent in each of the next three years.

In addition, the salary schedule for years served and academic credentials will provide faculty another raise. These are typically known as "step increases" and they are independent of the cost-of-living increases in the union contracts.

Step increases vary depending on which of the 13 "steps" a teacher is advancing to. For example, under the proposed agreement, a midcareer teacher at step six who has a master’s degree would make $47,518 next year. In the second year of the agreement, the teacher would earn $51,492 after advancing to step seven. Therefore, that teacher’s one-year salary increase would actually be 8.4 percent.

But according to Sam Herrick, business manager for the Region One school district, only three of Kellogg’s teachers are below step 13. Teachers already at step 13 receive no step increase — only the cost-of-living raise.

The teachers’ share of health insurance premiums will increase one percentage point — from 13 to 16 percent — in each of the four years of the proposed contract. The proposed agreement also includes a prescription drug program.

"We were very pleased with the contract," Downs said in an interview. "We felt we did well by the town of Canaan and our teachers at Kellogg." Falls Village is officially known as the town of Canaan.

Downs added that her board will enter into negotiations with non-certified staff such as in the next few weeks.

It is something of an oddity that the proposed agreement with the teachers is subject to a town meeting at all.

First Selectman Patricia Mechare said she believes Falls Village is the only town in the state with an ordinance that requires a town meeting to approve a collective bargaining agreement that has already been ratified by the board of education.

The ordinance requiring a town meeting was approved by voters Jan. 16, 1992. At that time, there was considerable discontent in the town with a proposed teacher contract that, in the words of then-Selectman Louis Timolat, "approached the point of jeopardizing the economic well-being of the town."

At that town meeting, the proposed agreement with the teachers was rejected by a vote of 73-39.

The town meeting begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 23, at the Lee H. Kellogg School.