{"id":9561,"date":"2015-03-18T10:11:25","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T14:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=9561"},"modified":"2015-03-20T12:02:28","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T16:02:28","slug":"teachers-union-hits-school-board-over-negotiations-briefing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=9561","title":{"rendered":"Teachers’ union hits UCF school board over negotiations briefing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Board honors retirees including UHS principal\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Karen Cresta<\/strong><\/span>, Correspondent, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"UCFLogoWeb\"<\/a>EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2013\u00a0Unionville-Chadds Ford Education Association President Scott Broomall responded with anger during the public comment portion of Monday night Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education meeting, over his surprise at the board\u2019s decision to go public early in the process to negotiate a new teacher contract, worse and that it was done on a school day at 10:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

His comments earned him a standing ovation by the majority in the audience.<\/p>\n

Broomall’s comments came as a new board agenda item \u2013 teacher negotiation update – was added last Friday and an extra notice was sent out to the district encouraging the community to be involved after a press briefing was held at the district office Friday morning revealing the status of negotiations for the teachers\u2019 three year contract.<\/p>\n

Board member and member of the negotiation team, Greg Lindner, reviewed the report on the status of the negotiations during Monday night\u2019s meeting.\u00a0 The Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board and the teachers\u2019 union differ in about three percentage points.\u00a0 According to Lindner, the next steps are to continue to bargain and find a balance between the teachers\u2019 demands and the taxpayers.<\/p>\n

Broomall, also a fifth grade teacher at Unionville Elementary made it clear he was upset at the board’s actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure if the school board stopped to realize but after the press conference concluded, there were messages to my cell phone, there was a call from the office, interrupting my class, asking if I could take a phone call, and there were e-mails that needed to be responded to from reporters needing comment from our side,” Broomall said. “I appreciate that reporters reached out to our side to get a more complete picture in the process but I am teaching during the day and can\u2019t answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in the middle of my fifth grade class, I\u2019m dealing with interruptions because the press needs comment,\u201d Broomall continued. \u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t fault the press at all.\u00a0 They have a job to do.\u00a0 I fault the board because if they had given more thought about when doing the press conference and truly cared that instruction that is happening in all the classrooms maybe they would have held the press conference at a different time, one that did not have to impact the students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broomall added, \u201cIt\u2019s a bit odd that the district goes public with the sides who are only about three percent apart and there\u2019s still three and a half months to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broomall went on to add, \u201cYou have penalized us.\u00a0 You have manipulated our proposal to this community.\u00a0 You have been selective in the information that you presented and you attacked the very professionals that make this a premier school district.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broomall put the teachers\u2019 proposal of a 5.01% increase into perspective by stating: \u201cThe proposal put forth by the teachers would cost the tax payers about $125 more a year.\u00a0 That\u2019s $10 a month – $.34 a day.\u00a0 That seems more than reasonable for our district – a district of our caliber.\u00a0 That\u2019s a cup of coffee a week.\u00a0 No teacher is looking to fleece the hard-working taxpayer, but people move to this area because of the school district we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broomall continued with statistics supporting the premier school district that it is and defended the standpoint that teachers should be compensated accordingly.\u00a0 He also mentioned that the school district is one of the wealthiest and sought after for residency.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope things change.\u00a0 There\u2019s still plenty of time to find a reasonable solution and I hope the board hears from many in the community,\u201d Broomall concluded.<\/p>\n

Broomall thanked everyone for their time and invited anyone interested in finding out more about what the teachers are doing to go on the new Facebook page \u2013 Unionville Chadds-Ford Education Association.<\/p>\n

The standing ovation that Broomall received from most members of the audience lasted more than 30 seconds.<\/p>\n

During board comment, Kathleen Do stated, \u201cI realize that we\u2019re headed into choppy waters. But I have full confidence that the district\u2019s negotiating team and the teacher\u2019s negotiating team will work with the best interest of the schools, the tax payers and the entire district to come to an equitable resolution.\u00a0 My message is simple.\u00a0 As we move forward, don\u2019t ever forget for one moment that you are valued and appreciated by us here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The board also approved an 8% increase for Kenneth E. Batchelor\u2019s employment contract as Assistant to the Superintendent. \u00a0Carolyn Daniels was the only board member against the vote, citing that timing and some of the terms in in light of the teachers\u2019 negotiations were her reasons.\u00a0 Robert Sage was not in attendance.<\/p>\n

The board was all in favor to approve the authorization to seek bids for Patton Middle School\u2019s renovations planned for this summer.\u00a0 The renovation includes a relocated entrance and new administration area as well as new classrooms for strings and band.\u00a0 The board also approved the transfer of more than $1 million from the general fund to the capital reserve fund.\u00a0 This money that was from the savings of the general obligation bonds will be used for the renovations.<\/p>\n

In other news, the board recognized eight district employees for their upcoming retirement.\u00a0 Among the anticipated retirees was Unionville High School principal Paula Massanari, who will be retiring in July.<\/p>\n

Superintendent John Sanville admitted his surprise at Massanari\u2019s announcement since he usually sees the signs of people who are about to retire.\u00a0 He thanked her for her service and agreed from her personnel file that the words to describe her such as professionalism, character, innate ability, passion, desire to make a difference and honesty were traits that he still sees.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are not just leaving us,\u201d Sanville said, \u201cYou are leaving us better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visit www.ucfsd.org<\/a> to view board documents and meeting schedules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Board honors retirees including UHS principal\u00a0 By Karen Cresta, Correspondent, The Times EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2013\u00a0Unionville-Chadds Ford Education Association President Scott Broomall responded with anger during the public comment portion of Monday night Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education meeting, over his surprise at the board\u2019s decision to go public early in the process to negotiate a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[100,5565,5564,614,850],"class_list":["post-9561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-board-of-education","tag-negotiations","tag-teachers-contract","tag-unionville-chadds-ford","tag-unionville-chadds-ford-education-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9595,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9561\/revisions\/9595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}