Brick School Board Approves Slight Pay Increase For Teachers

Brick Township’s teaching staff will receive a slight increase in pay each of the next three years under contract terms approved by the Board of Education Thursday night.

The board voted to approve a memorandum of understanding that provides for increases in the district’s base salary amounts of 3.41 percent for the 2015-16 school year, 3.30 percent in 2016-17 and 3.19 percent in 2017-18, district officials said Thursday night.

However both the district’s labor attorney, Paul C. Kalac of the firm Schwartz, Simon, Edelstein and Celso, of Whippany, and business administrator James Edwards said the percentages are not flat across-the-board increases for each teacher, but a total increase in the budgeted salary amount. Each increase is roughly $2 million, and by the end of the contract is projected to bring the base salary amount to about $64 million.

“The actual distribution (to each teacher) is much different,” Kalac said.

Kalac also said the salary increase is offset by a significant change in the health benefits agreed to by the district’s teachers’ union that will reduce health insurance costs to the district by about $1.9 million for the 2015-16 school year.

“It’s a net cost to the district of about $145,000,” Edwards said of the salary increase. The amount of the difference in the second and third years of the contract will depend on the insurance costs, Edwards said.

“To get a change in (health) insurance is a serious concession,” Kalac said.

Tim Puglisi, president of the Brick Township Education Association, thanked the board after the vote, saying the negotiation process was painful for both sides but that the result was fair to both.

The approval vote, however, did not sit well with some members of the audience.

Vic Fanelli, a vocal critic of district spending, ripped the board and president Sharon Cantillo for not allowing public comment or questions before the vote was taken. Barring public comment was a decision Cantillo made on the advice of Kalac, who said allowing questions could open the board to an unfair labor practices claim if the board voted to reject the agreement.

Fanelli was furious, however, saying Cantillo should not have allowed Kalac to dictate who would speak and should have consulted the board attorney, Jack Sahradnik, instead.

Sahradnik said the issue of whether to allow public comment on the agreement was complicated by the fact that three board members -- Michael Conti, Frank Pannucci Jr. and John Barton -- were not allowed to comment on the terms or even see it until the topic came up on the agenda.

Because Conti and Barton’s wives both teach in the district, as does Pannucci’s sister, under rules defined by the School Ethics Commission, the three could ask questions but anything perceived as critical of the contract agreement could be seen as trying to take part in negotiations, Kalac said. That is expressly forbidden, he said. The three were permitted to vote on the agreement by invoking the doctrine of necessity only because the four affirmative votes were needed to approve it.

Fanelli still insisted he should have been permitted to speak and objected to Kalac ”dictating” how the meeting would go.

He also ripped the board for granting raises when the district is using bonds to pay for textbooks.

“You say you don’t have the money to buy books,” he said. “This is one of the reasons why.”