NEWARK – The Worcester County Board of Education voted unanimously this week to extend negotiations with the teachers association.
The school board on Tuesday agreed to extend negotiations with the Worcester County Teachers Association (WCTA) and the Worcester County Education Support Personal Association. Though the groups had initially agreed to certain salary increases for staff, administration said the school system could not afford those increases with the maintenance of effort (MOE) level of funding Worcester County provided this year.
“We are hopeful we can work some kind of increase in,” said Beth Shockley-Lynch, president of the WCTA. “We’re trying to make the best package we can with the limited funds. It won’t be as good as we negotiated but they deserve something.”
The school board last month approved an updated budget featuring a variety of cuts to address a $4.4 million shortfall that arose with the county’s approval of a MOE budget for the school system. Officials made clear at that time the 4% pay increase for teachers and the 4.5% pay increase for support staff could not be funded with the reduced budget. As a result, negotiations between the associations and the school board have been ongoing.
At this week’s school board meeting, several parents and teachers spoke in support of educators. Rose Zollinger, parent of children in the school system who is also a Worcester County Public Schools counselor, said she felt obligated to speak up. She said quality education did not come cheap.
Promised raises with money they didn’t have? And then people thought giving speeches supporting the increase was going to make a difference?
I think asking questions as to why they didnt answer the county’s inquiries for supporting documents should be the first words uttered.
Who knew “quality education” means annually increasing the percentage of students NOT proficient in reading and math? Reminds me of the recent revelation that the “vaccine” provides “negative efficacy”.
The teachers will be very lucky to get a 1% raise, if anything at all. If you are a teacher in this county and are upset about this, email Big Lou to ask why he didn’t provide all of the details asked of him by the county comms. I’ll tell you why – because doing so would expose significant financial waste, which was the point in the first place.