School Board, Support Staff Argue Over Deal

Clad in black with "rESPect" across their chests, they filled almost every seat in the stuffed room.

Phil Descarfino was one of them. The 26-year Hopatcong schools custodian led an often-heated argument between the district's support personnel and Board of Education during its meeting Monday night at the .

Descarfino and other members of the support personnel staff—custodians, cafeteria and maintenance workers and educational support employees—voiced anger over what they considered unfair treatment from the school board during contract negotiations, which have lasted almost two years. The support staff's last contract ended June 30, 2010.

Descarfino said he felt "slapped in the face" by the school board's refusal give the support staff first-year and retroactive raises in a new deal.

"All we're asking is for a cost-of-living raise," Descarfino said. "We're not talking about additional benefits. We're talking about a 1.5-percent or 2-percent raise."

President Cliff Lundin and Superintendent Dr. Charles Maranzano each said they refused to violate terms of an agreement between the district and the support staff by negotiating in public, but defended the Board of Education.

"Everyone in this economy is sharing the pain," Lundin said. "We have made fair and reasonable offers and we have negotiated in good faith and I'm not going to violate the agreement that we have signed."

The support staff last year refused a one-year contract extension that would have kept salaries flat, but relieved members with health benefits from paying for 1.5 percent of the costs, Lundin said.

"This expression of public support for your position is very democratic and very welcome," Maranzano said to the support staff in the room. "But please don't accuse us of not acting in good faith when, indeed, we are acting within the parameters and rules that we've agreed on."

The sides are expected to meet with a state-appointed fact-finder March 5. They have met at least twice with a state-appointed mediator. And while they made progress on non-salary issues, "we were nowhere near each other on the economic issues," Lundin said.

Another cause of the support staff's ire, Descarfino said, was that the district had recently agreed on a contract with its secretaries and was in the final stages of finalizing a deal with its teachers' union.

"We want our piece of the pie, too," he said. "We have families to support."

The all-black look wasn't totally new for the ESPs. Several of them said they had each worn all black to work for the last two Fridays as a sign of solidarity.

High School ESP Marilyn Volpe said without fair pay raises many of the support personnel could be forced to find work elsewhere as the economy struggles to recover and food and gas prices continue to jump.

"We don't want to go to Wal-Mart," she said. "We don't want to go to Quick Chek. I want to be here with the kids.

"Please let us stay here. Please show us you can give us a cost-of-living increase."

But Volpe also said when she hears the school board talking about balancing its budget, she thinks about her family.

"But I also say, 'The kids got to eat. The kids have to have food, have to have clothing and have to have gas,'" she said. "It has to come from somewhere … You can't have people working for nothing."

Middle school ESP Nancy Marinaro said she routinely buys classroom supplies, such as notebooks, and volunteers to take on extra responsibilities.

"I don't hand receipts in," she said. "I don't ask for money for it."

Fifth-grade teacher Antoinette Haines said the support personnel deserve a raise.

"I honestly think this," she said. "If you look in your budget and look in you soul, [the raise] is not a lot."

But Maranzano said the key to further talks between the groups is to "continue to move forward in good faith and let the process play itself out."

Correction: An earlier version on this article quoted Karen Walsh instead of Marilyn Volpe.