Since negotiations involve 2 parties, it helps to have information on both positions. For the last offer/counter offers between the BoE and MEA, refer to the summary in this link.http://kids.baristanet.com/2013/02/details-of-impasse-between-the-montclair-boe-and-montclair-education-association/. On the point of the benefits for the paraprofessionals, it looks like there is agreement and the aides would be eligible for benefits under the last set of offers exchanged. Montclair residents and public school parents firmly support our teachers. In your ongoing and follow-up reporting, please be include independent information, not just BoE or MEA statements. This will be invaluable as we advocate for our students. Any context that you can report on for as many of the sticking points as possible is appreciated. For example, related to Ms. Wilson's comments and comparative county/state salary #s -- what are those benchmarks?. And how might the $1m in benefits request impact a teacher's co-pay or contribution to the plan? How do these proposed level of contributions compare to other districts? How many districts go to mediation? How long did the Montclair BoE and MEA negotiate and how many offers/counter offers were exchanged before the 'Impasse' was filed? Many thanks.

Thank you members of the Board of Education for shining some light at the end of the Montclair tunnel for many citizens in Montclair. The terms you are proposing are not only fair, they are better than industry averages. You are offering to put back the benefits for the aids, something not being done in most, if not all, districts for part time workers.

The Union President's "NO" screamed volumes that this isn't about the Montclair schools, students or teachers, but about power, their power.

The averages secured by Unions are generally used in subsequent negotiations as precedent. Montclair is being used as a pawn in all of this to get the averages higher. They are disgruntled Montclair hired a negotiator so the playing field would be level. It is incredibly sad and disheartening for the students and the teachers who are most directly being used in this power struggle.

Many people realize it isn't a matter of throwing more money at the budget, but allocating the $100+ million that is being spent within the schools better. BOE, your hard work and efforts are very much appreciated.

Adam,

Please provide (which the Board failed to do when they made the same comment) what those "better than industry averages" are. I love these claims without any support. The "industry" in the US? NJ? Essex? Don't compare apples to oranges either.

As a resident, I do support the teachers efforts. However, the union needs to stop living in fantasy world where wages increase 3% per annum. Take a look at the national unemployment picture.. Effectively we have 20% unemployment as measured by the U7. Wages in the private sector have continued to grow at only 1-2%. Meanwhile my property taxes have exceeded this number, as have the everyday cost of living. I had to chuckle when the MEA wants 75% of the teachers to approve their scheduling for the following year. Why can't I expect my teachers to actually teach? They don't want to teach for more than 4 classes or 3 in the HS?? If you don't want to actually teach...what do you want to do all day? Plan? Review? Attention: In the private sector, your supervisor informs you of your task and expects you to do it. Not a democracy. The union is against additional developmental days....right, why would I want additional development of my top of the tables Montclair educators.. Finally, FULL TIME worker definition...the union wants 20 hours/week...the Board 32 hours/week. Where in this country is someone who "works" 4 hours a day considered full time? Even 32 is a joke. The average hours work in the US is 34.4 according the BLS. Can the union please wake up, I'm very confident if your employees don't want the current offer I can find several thousand out of work teachers who will be happy with the job. Now, I have to get back to work.

here is an article on average NJ teacher raises negotiated in 2012:

http://www.njsba.org/news/press-releases/teacher-contracts-bring-lower-settlements-more-instruction-time.php

Summarized on the Barista Site toward the bottom in a comment.....

http://kids.baristanet.com/2013/02/details-of-impasse-between-the-montclair-boe-and-montclair-education-association/

Comparing Montclair to NJ is reasonable I think.

BOE declared fake budget crisis requiring no health care for aides, layoffs, givebacks, etc. Then, BOE announces huge surpluses!! $13.4mil now, 10 times cost of aides's health care($1.3mil). Class sizes grow and grow, reducing each teacher's attention to our kids's learning. At Mon eve mtg, BOE head Robin Kulwin blamed MEA for "impasse" but then MEA head Gayl Shepard said she kept mtg with BOE after the "final" wkend talks ended in "impasse." BOE does not understand how crucial fine teachers, small classes, and fine pub schls are to to the civic life of Mtc and to family life here. Families move here and pay high prices for our homes and high taxes. It's a stretch for all of us. Why stretch? B/c we parents are devoted to our kids---and what we want most of all for them is excellent pub schls with respected prof'l teachers. Schooling for our kids counts first in the choice of high-price, high-tax Mtc., not the fine restaurants or boutiques. By cutting schl budgets and returning moneys to a Town Council subsidizing over-development, BOE undermines our kids, family lives, and property values. Families will pay premium home prices and high taxes for well-run pub schls where kids of all colors can grow up together. Our teachers are doing their part--gave back salary, donate countless hours to tutor and mentor students, volunteering unpaid labor which all good pub schls need for our kids development. BOE is sacrificing the special quality of this town in its war on the teachers.

As one person pointed out in the public comment period last night, the kids are being used as pawns by the MEA.

My daughter is at MHS, and I heard from her about this coming situation (work-to-contract) last week, when the teachers told their students about it. What is very distressing is that some teachers DO want to continue offering before-school, lunch-period, and after-school help to their students, but they are facing pressure from other teachers to toe the MEA line; being treated like scabs, in effect, as if by giving extra help they would be crossing a picket line that does not (so far) exist.

So instead of being able to get extra help before today’s physics test, my daughter had to try to track down a private tutor. I can only imagine how many other kids are going to be in this boat until the impasse is over. Besides being hard to come by, depending on subject matter, tutors are quite expensive. Guess which kids will be hurt the most by work-to-contract? The most vulnerable students who cannot afford help that comes at $80-100/hr. (and up).

The MEA undermines itself by using such a tactic, particularly at the high-school level.

Ira - if you want a town where only wealthy people will come and pay huge property taxes... then okay ramp up spending on the schools and give teachers and aides everything they want. I have 2 kids in school and 1 more soon to be there and somehow afford to pay my property taxes. While it's expensive, I subscribe to your argument that it's cheaper than 3 private school tuitions. But I feel for people who either don't have kids in the system or are middle class and would like to stay in their modest home in Montclair. If you can go to Trenton and change the funding system for schools go for it - otherwise you have to wake up to the reality that allocating too much of the pie to the schools will wind up yielding a town of rich and poor and drive further out those residents who don't have children. There has to be a balance and finding surpluses is the BOE cushioning against further tax increases on the school portion of the bill. This is not a "fake budget crisis" when property taxes have gone up tremendously in the last decade along with increases in federal income taxes and stagnant wages and increasing unemployment and underemployment. Throw in a rough overall global economy and you have a very real crisis and a need to operate a little lean to get through it with the whole town's well being in mind - not just you and me or others who have kids in school. Tanya Coke said it well - we also have an obligation to the rest of the community.

People do move here for the schools--and many of them move away again once their kids graduate because they cannot or will not keep paying property taxes that have skyrocketed. At some point the value proposition (high taxes vs. private-school tuition) changes.

Also, good schools (or the perception thereof) keep our property values high. Whether or not you agree with their methodology, in the NJ Monthly magazine state rankings, Montclair High School has fallen from #85 in 2008, to #94 in 2010, to #99 in 2012. It is interesting that Columbia High School in Maplewood--a community many compare to Montclair--rose from #75 in 2010 to #47 in 2012.

A lot of people use those rankings when deciding where to move for public schools. Rising taxes and falling rankings--it's an uncomfortable situation.

Does anyone know that the teachers opened their contract and gave back raises three years in a row- does anyone in Montclair do something for nothing? Teachers are worth it- there is a direct correlation between property values and the quality of the schools which is something Montclair enjoys. Gimme a break- name someone who works for nothing. But it's expected of your teachers? Really?

One other point- the people who represent taxpayers on the Board of Education are appointed- they are not elected so whose interests do they represent?

Our schl rank down? Let's raise it with smaller classes, more quality teaching, not more costly testing. MTC's schl rep adds value to all properties, not only those with kids in schl. Schls give Mtc prime appeal along with racial diversity and leafy streets. If our town has been mismanaged for 20 yrs by the TCs and Mayors, let's not make it worse by making our kids pay for it. They didn't hand over PILOTS and abatements to developers. BOE has to represent children and families, not RE developers. A child-friendly, family-friendly BOE would ask first, What do the kids need to learn the most? And not be proud of returning surpluses to a build-it-bigger TC. Cutting schl budgets, we sabotage our kids and our property values at the same time, two big losses in one destructive move. Strong schls float prop values in these dreadful times and convince parents to dig deep for the taxes so we don't worry about our kids getting good teaching for 6 hrs a day. A family with 3 kids surely wins in this arrangement b/c pvt schls cost $20k/kid($40K/kid in NYC);a RE tax of even $30k is a bargain compared to a $60K tuition bill for 3 kids. This is why families move here, b/c high taxes for exc pub schls is the simply the best deal families can get now. Others lament lower-inc families unable to keep up with taxes. Again, I invite them to join me in a campaign for a progressive RE tax. We can devise a fair sliding-scale tax that protects the bottom half, top half pays more, which includes me.

We should not be giving health benefits to part time employees. It is unprecedented in the private sector and rare in the public sector. And please don't point the surplus as reasoning - that money should be used to offset future capital expenses or tax relief.

Thomas Reynolds and Tonya Coke both play the community card; however, they could not be further apart. Mr. Reynolds is right and Ms. Coke is (recklessly) wrong. School are an essential service to the whole of the community, not just to the children or the families of school--going children. School play an essential role in establishing and maintaining public order and a low crime rate. Schools provide the future leadership to our communities as well as an important focal point for the cultural and artistic life of the community. And school provide for learning and sports well beyond the school walls and athletic fields.

Allow the Montclair school system to fall further below its current 99th ranking in the state, however real or perceived that might be, and all members of the community will lose on their property values (though their taxes will only likely continue increase). Good public school are essential to good communities, regardless of the percentage of town's people with school-going children or the availability of private education. Ira Shor presents well considered thoughts, but the value of good public schools for a community cannot be measured only through a simple cost comparison with private schools.

Seeing how this Board of Education behaves with regard to education and students, it is difficult to take them seriously. The BOE is answerable only to the Town Council, and indeed it is the Town Council that is behind this devaluation of teaching and schools.

Ira - Please give us fair warning on the progressive real estate tax plan. The majority of the top half will move (especially the ones with no kids in school), leaving the lower half with even higher taxes than they have now.

As Ira Shor and esther rightly hint, the Board of Education is only doing what its lords have asked. We have been repeatedly told that the incompetence of this Town Council needs to be accepted because the town folk are now getting that for which they voted: "development" (with no vision, no transparency and no accountability). Supposedly this Town Council was not going to raise taxes or cut into the community services. However, by pressuring the Board of Education to save on teachers' and teacher aids' salaries and compensations, it is not only cutting into the most essential town service, the school system, but it is also seriously threatening the present education of Montclair's children as well as their future educational and professional development. How can the Town Council explain that it provides a pass to developers on paying town taxes but teachers and teacher's aids cannot receive a just contract?

Parents, students, and all town folk should support (as the vast majority of them already seem to) the legitimate and reasonable proposal by the teachers for a "working to contract" action until the TC and the BOE stop trying to cut into the entire community's core service of a high quality education system.

The town council has not chimed in on this topic at all, nor do I think that they have a say. I would suspect that their position is that the BOE needs to stay within its $110,000,000 budget.

During this long period of contract negotiations that has already past, and which has been entirely about taxpayer money for the Board of Education, it is interesting to (try and) believe that there has been no discussion on this topic between members of the BOE and those who appoint them, the Town Council. And it was interesting to see that the Town Council so lavishly congratulated itself recently for saving money through a "surplus" in the BOE's budget.

It is also interesting to consider that during this crisis in a core town service, education, the Town Council has not "chimed in." The Town Council does most certainly expect a significant surplus in the BOE's 110 million dollar budget to contribute to "development."

tryintosurvive, we may not be privy to exactly how the bells are rung inside the BOE, but surely it is not the interests of students, parents and the wider community pulling the ropes.

Not sure what the belI comment means, but I guess your answer means that the 3% that the teachers want is above the yearly raise that every teacher already gets.

No. tryintosurvive, perhaps read again. Montclair is not the right place to put development ahead of education.

I have not heard that anyone in trying to reduce the current $111,000,00 school budget and give it to anyone. I think what is being said is that the schools need to stay within that budget this year and for the next few years. They can't make an agreement that would go above that. That seems reasonable.

Thank goodness Peter Zorich was not elected to anything. The first thing sentence of his post here is a pitiful distortion or an outright lie. The health benefits taken were from FULL-TIME aides. Go into any school and see for yourself what time they report, what time they leave and how much they do. Yes, there are also part-time aides. No, they have NEVER received health benefits. It is pathetic that you mislead those who only follow this casually and might be inclined to run with the nonsense that comes out of your mouth.

Money doesn't correlate to the quality of service delivery.

You're right that research suggests that the mere increase in the amount of money paid to teachers doesn't correlate with improved educational outcomes. However, there are interesting studies that suggest that part of the difference between achievement in OECD countries has to do with differences in the relative *status* of teachers in their respective countries. That status is signaled, at least in part, by the rung on the economic ladder that teachers occupy relative to the society as a whole. In the U.S., teachers are much lower on the overall economic ladder than their counterparts are in high-achieving OECD countries.

Especially in the U.S., where "status" is so much more about one's paycheck and net worth than the 'intangibles' of one's character, it seems to me pretty much self-evident that we don't, as a society, see teaching as a high-status profession, despite whatever lip service we concoct. And because of that, it is much more difficult for us to recruit a consistently-talented and motivated army of teachers than it is for other countries.

It's not as though paying more will result in a sudden uptick in outcomes. But if we offer teachers wages that signal our belief that teaching is (or should be) a high-status, respected profession, then the tide will rise, and the quality of candidates for teaching positions will gradually and consistently improve.

One cannot drill down from US society to Montclair New Jersey and expect that the effect of a local 10% over 3 year salary increase will then filter back up to have meaningful impact on the status of teachers across the USA.

We already pay more than many neighboring school systems and we privately donate considerable sums and are generally involved in our children's educations. We already have sent the signal that we value teachers.

Signals go in both directions. There is a context in which many of our fellow citizens are struggling financially. Would anyone argue that Montclair's tax burden is not extraordinary? All the township's employees realize the local tax burden is sky-high and the gamesmanship being played out in this case makes all of us feel under-appreciated.

Is anyone aware that the board of education wants to pay 700,000 dollars to hire outside evaluators to come in to evaluate the teachers in Montclair now that they have adopted a new evaluation tool? 700,000 dollars???????? Really- now someone defend that and say it makes sense. Isn't that why we have principals and vice principals? Isn't that their job? 700,000 dollars?????????

it's what phony educators do when they get control: over-test and over-evaluate and create a top-heavy administration at the expense of those who actually teach. this new superintendent -- and this is not meant as a personal attack -- is a product of the Cristie-Cerf approach and her presence is in this town is the perfect illustration -- along with what was done to the aides -- of a BOE that does not represent Montclair's traditional (collective) values, nor its complex needs. she needs to be shouted down and pressured to leave