The last major hurdle in contract negotiations between the Cherry Hill Board of Education and the Cherry Hill Education Association appears to have finally been cleared.
Board of education and CHEA officials confirmed last Wednesday afternoon the two sides agreed to salary guides for teachers, secretaries, custodians and other support personnel, paving the way for a ratification vote in the next couple of weeks.
The agreement came after the board of education announced it rejected CHEA’s proposed salary guide for teachers on Jan. 14. It accepted the originally proposed salary guide for secretaries, custodians and other support personnel.
At the time, the board cited a lack of improvement in first step salaries and devaluation of salaries in steps one to 16A for the 2015–16 and 2016–17 school years as the concerns it had with the proposed guide.
On Jan. 19, CHEA gave a revised set of proposed salary guides to the board of education’s negotiating committee. The board met in a special executive session last Tuesday to discuss the guides and decided to accept them after a “great deal of discussion.”
“While CHEA met the shared goal of improving the starting salary by the final year of the contract, the guides do not address all of the outstanding issues that were identified,” the board’s statement read. “The board appreciates CHEA’s efforts to meet this goal.”
The board added the new contract and salary guides will allow the school district to attract and retain the highest quality teachers.
In December, the two sides agreed to recommendations from a state-appointed fact-finder, which included a salary increase for CHEA members of 2.56 percent retroactive for the 2014–15 school year, a 2.8 percent increase in the current 2015–16 school year and 2.95 percent increase in each of the 2016–17 and 2017–18 schools years. The revised salary guides reflect each of these increases. The pending four-year contract will run through the 2017–18 school year.
CHEA President Martin Sharofsky said the contract negotiation process was challenging, but he is relieved his association and the board are another step closer to ratification.
“Would we have liked more? Sure, we would have liked more,” Sharofsky said. “But we understood and we accepted what the fact-finder said.”
Both CHEA and the board said funding for public education in the state was the biggest issue when the two sides were trying to negotiate.
“Funding of public education continues to be a tough issue in this state,” Sharofsky said.
“Creating a budget that is fiscally responsible to the community and which meets the needs of individual students in the district will continue to be a challenge, especially in communities like Cherry Hill,” the board’s statement read.
School district public information officer Barbara Wilson and Sharofsky both said a timeline for ratification has not yet been set. Sharofsky said CHEA has a process where it must provide all materials regarding ratification to its members 48 hours before a ratification vote. This gives the members time to review all of the information and meet with CHEA officials to ask questions before the vote.
If CHEA approves the contract, the board will then hold an open public meeting to vote on ratification. Information on when a vote will take place will be made available prior to the vote. The contract will not go into effect until both CHEA and the board have ratified it.
