Lee school unions freeze salaries, health benefits

By MATT CLARK
Thursday, May 15, 2008

Lee County school district employees waiting for their annual raise shouldn´t hold their breath.

Representatives from the union-affiliated Teachers Association of Lee County and Support Personnel Association of Lee County, which represent nearly all of the district´s 11,000 employees, decided Thursday to extend negotiations meant to solve the district´s state Legislature-induced budget crisis until around Sept. 30. The extension will also put on hold any changes to district employees´ health benefit plans and any raises the employees would have received beginning July 1.

If the employee´s raises hadn´t been frozen, they would have received a 3 percent raise across the board and up to a 6 percent raise, or “step,” if they´ve been with the district between a year to 15 years.

Bonita Springs Middle School sixth-grade math teacher Clara Verhaagh said the financial situation, both at school and at home, is the worst it has been in a very long time.

“Of course, it´s disappointing to me, but in reality it´s just the way the economy is right now,” said Verhaagh, who has been with the district for 29 years. “It´s disappointing, especially for people who have steps and raises all coming along.”

The employee groups have been in contract negotiations meant to fill a $14.6 million hole in the district´s budget since early April. Negotiations were going quickly, and that´s exactly why they´ve been extended, Support Personnel Association President Bob Rushlow said.

“We need to continue having discussions around the insurance and other cost saving ideas that we can look at together without putting the employees in a position where they could be losing their jobs,” Rushlow said. “The intent was there´s some things out there that we need to look at more closely.”

Rushlow said the groups will be waiting for the district´s preliminary budget, which is passed in late July, for the state´s revenue estimating conference, which will give a more detailed look at how tax revenues will impact the 2009 budget, and for student enrollment figures, which may also have an impact on the budget.

Teachers Association Representative Donna Mutzenard, who is a service unit director with the Florida Education Association, said the groups will be looking “under every rock and every crevice” for further cuts to be made outside of the employee´s health benefit or salary increase packages.

The district has made about $14.4 million in cuts, among them nearly 150 employee positions, all district field trips and some funding for high school athletic events, band uniforms and musical instrument repair. District officials have said the $14.6 million remainder of the $28.8 million budget hole must come from the contract negotiations, as everything they can cut has been.

Two particular areas where the negotiations have focused are on the employees´ health benefit plan, valued at about $64 million, and what remains of their $21 million salary increase package - about $6 million. Mutzenard said those in the negotiations felt the $6 million was too small a number and other options needed to be prusued, a feeling that ushered in the contract extension.

“There is some money there, but we don´t feel that the money that is there right now is sufficient to do what our bargaining unit members want,” Mutzenard said.

Rushlow said no concrete decisions have been made. He mentioned an insurance task force has been organized to look at various options beyond those the employee groups have already discussed.

“We believe we took the safe way,” Rushlow said of the groups´ decision. “We´re talking peoples lives here, we´re talking about people´s families. Let´s face it, there isn´t any work out there. Everything is on the table.”

Despite the shaky forecast, district employee Luanne Sutton, who teaches at Three Oaks Elementary School, said she is prepared.

“To be quite honest, you just got to take it as it comes and work at it in September,” Sutton said. “It isn´t the district being spiteful. We just have to work with the district as best we can.”

© Naples News