Teacher Contract Negotiations Set for Friday

Hatboro-Horsham school teacher Jim Sullivan's plea to the school board will be granted Friday as officials meet for one last informal teacher contract negotiation session. 

Sullivan pleaded with the board at its to allow Superintendent Curtis Griffin and business administrator Robert Reichert to meet with Hatboro-Horsham Education Association President Jackie Anderson, as well as another union representative for "one last session."

Griffin said today that the informal meeting is slated for Friday at 11 a.m.

"I'm hoping we have a lengthy discussion," Griffin said.  

If needed, the parties have also scheduled a formal negotiation session for April 14, Griffin said. At that session, attorneys for both sides would be on hand. 

The district's more than 400 teachers have worked without a contract since it expired June 30, 2009. Salary and benefits, in particular, have been the sticking points, Anderson said previously. 

Besides impacting after school functions and extra curricular activities where teachers once participated, the lengthy stalemate is making the already difficult budgeting process for the 2011-2012 district spending plan even more challenging. 

Griffin has said on several occasions that in order to close a projected , programs would need to be scaled back and teachers would need to be furloughed and possibly demoted. 

On Thursday, he reiterated the uncertainties looming as the contract negotiation process looms on.

"Will we have a contract? Will we get an early retirement?" Griffin asked.  

Griffin said previously that the district stands to save about $110,000 for an early retirement incentive for teachers at the top of the scale as compared to roughly $60,000 for furloughing a teacher at step 1.

Anderson has said she favors the early retirement option.

Sign-toting teachers have  outside the last two school board meetings. And while Anderson said that Hatboro-Horsham teachers have given a strike authorization, she said on March 21 that the union did not plan on a work stoppage. 

Patch was unsuccessful in reaching Anderson for comment Thursday.