New Central Bucks support staff contract could be coming in January

A new contract for the support staff in the Central Bucks School District could be coming as soon as January, according to school and union officials Monday night.

The Central Bucks Education Support Professional Association and the district have been deadlocked in contract negotiations for 11 months, nearly half of that time after the previous five-year contract for the more than 900 district employees expired in June.

The specific reasons for the stalled contract have not been discussed publicly, but so deep was the divide that the union and district sought out an independent arbitrator to draft a report to suggest a new contract.

Central Bucks Director of Human Resources Andrea DiDio-Hauber said during this week’s board meeting that the mediator’s report and proposed contract is expected in only a matter of days.

“We are hopeful that, once the recommendations are received, it can be adopted by both the union and the board. If that occurs, we will have a new contract for up to five years covering our educational assistants, custodians, administrative staff, facilities, our security personnel and others,” said DiDio-Hauber.

Union members have been mostly quiet over the ongoing negotiations at public meetings, which Deneen Dry said Monday was due largely to the continuously lengthy and contentious public comment periods that have focused mostly on pandemic policies in the district.

Dry and several other union members broke that silence this week, calling out the previous board’s apparent “hesitation” at the negotiation table.

“We are told we are the front line. We are told we are essential, and we don’t hesitate for a minute when it comes to protecting our students. And yet, for some reason, the previous board felt hesitation in awarding us — the front-line, essential employees — a fair and not-greedy contract,” Dry said.

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A copy of the previous union contract available online through www.cbsd.org shows set annual wage increases based on market rates projected between between the 2016-2017 and 2020-2021 school years.

For example, a staff nurse who made less than $25.98 an hour, the market rate in the 2016-2017 school year, would have seen a 3% pay increase for that year, followed by a 3.5% raise for each of the next two school years, and a 3.75% increase in each of the following two school years until the contact expired.

District support workers told this news organization last month that they expected the new contract would take into consideration all of the additional responsibilities brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

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Several other support staff echoed those comments Monday, with Dry adding that a staffing shortage in multiple departments is both making roles her members fill more essential and more stressful.

DiDio-Hauber said the union could ratify the new proposed contract later this month, which would allow the school board to vote on the contract as early as its next meeting on Jan. 11.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Central Bucks school support staff urge board members to pass new contract