Mars Area School District teachers are offering their reaction to the latest proposal from the school board.
In a statement, the union says that they were surprised by the offer that was posted to the district’s website Thursday night.
Our newsroom spoke with Mars Middle School teacher Joe Graff who is also a spokesman for the Mars Area Education Association. He says that the union was surprised by the public proposal.
“I would prefer that the negotiations remain private. I would also prefer that we continue to negotiate in good faith and that proposals get exchanged,” Graff said. “We tend to have a lot of meetings but not a lot of proposals exchanged. I think that’s where the frustration [from our membership] has come from.”
The statement also reads that the teachers union was “incredibly frustrated that the school district did not offer a proposal during the negotiations meeting on February 3rd.”
Graff also added that the union hasn’t had a chance to review the latest proposal.
“We’ve been attempting to negotiate now for about 19 months, and in the last 13 months we’ve seen four proposals. The last of which was posted publicly, and we have not had an opportunity to review that proposal as a team,” Graff said as of noon on Friday.
The latest proposal from the district is a four year offer that includes no raises for this upcoming year, but does have a $1,500 bonus. It then includes a raise of 3 percent next year, followed by 3.75 percent increases over the next two years.
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