Teachers Rally in Trenton, Locally

Fair Lawn teachers displayed their frustration on two fronts Thursday, rallying at the New Jersey State House before demonstrating for a new contract outside Edison school on Fair Lawn Avenue.

About 60 local teachers attended the New Jersey Education Association's large-scale rally in Trenton, responding to the introduction of a bill that would shift more pension and health benefit costs to public employees.

Then, before the Board of Education's monthly meeting, more than 100 borough teachers—many of whom attended the rally earlier Thursday—demonstrated outside the board's headquarters. Fair Lawn teachers are approaching the one-year mark for working under an expired labor agreement; their contract ran out on June 30, 2010.

"They (the Board of Education) put us on hold and hold and hold, and we're starting to speak up, I think," Nicole Rios, a science teacher at , said at the demonstration outside Edison School. "We're starting to band together and speak up."

Teachers previously held outside Fair Lawn schools in May. Gene Kuffel, president of the Fair Lawn Education Association (FLEA) union, compared attending both local and statewide demonstrations in one day to the nature of his teaching profession.

"You just deal with anything and everything all at once," Kuffel said.

Kuffel said 30 teachers came with the school district on a bus to Trenton, while 30 traveled on their own. He said it was "very energizing to hear [support for teachers] from several lawmakers," including local District 38 representatives such as State Sen. Bob Gordon and Assemblywoman Connie Wagner.

Fair Lawn teachers are suffering a double dose of frustration, Kuffel explained, given activity in Trenton like State Senate President Sweeney's proposal to overhaul health and pension benefits as well as the contractual situation locally.

"We're not looking to get something that's not earned," Kuffel said. "We're not looking for some handouts."

"It is very hectic here, to put it mildly," he said of the current situation for Fair Lawn teachers, on the local and state levels.

Dawn Ebner, FLEA's treasurer, said that both sides in the contract negotiations—representatives from the teachers union and the Board of Education—were assigned "homework" by an outside third party after the first session of a fact-finding process May 9. She said that FLEA did its homework and the Board of Education did not, leading to the cancelation of what would have been a second fact-finding session June 7.

Superintendent of Schools Bruce Watson said that Joe Tondi, NJEA's regional representative, canceled the second fact-finding session. Watson added that he thinks both sides in the negotiations have "good arguments."

"I'm hoping the two sides come together very soon and settle their differences," Watson said.