'Best Offer' Contract Rejected By Neshaminy Support Staff: District

LANGHORNE, PA —Contract talks between the Neshaminy School District and its support staff have ended after the Neshaminy Employee Support Personnel Association rejected a proposal that school officials said was the "absolute final best offer."

Both sides began negotiations on a new contract last December. The existing contract expired on June 30.

The proposed contract had total wages increasing over 4% for each of the 5 years, increasing the total cost to the district and taxpayers $3.4 million over the life of the contract.

NESPA membership turned down the package on Sept. 17 that the two sides had agreed on as a result of bargaining sessions, which often included a state mediator. The district said in a press release that NESPA had the proposal for four months.

This was and is the absolute final best offer before the bargaining process starts over. We hope NESPA leadership will engage with their membership to reconvene in reconsideration of this proposal. The District believes the offer is fair and both sides would benefit from a settlement.

The district said it agreed with the Union’s bargaining framework, called informal bargaining, which limited the number of items each side brought to the table in an effort to streamline the process.

NESPA did not return requests from Patch seeking comment.

But in a response through a Pennsylvania State Education Association representative, the main reason given was regarding spousal coverage in benefits, according to published reports.

Bonnie Neiman, the representative, added that the district also negotiated mid-contract wage increases with confidential secretaries and cabinet-level employees and settled on a new contract with its principals, the Bucks County Courier News reported.

In years two through five of the contract, the district agreed to move employees up from the new employee wage rate to the grandfathered wage rate, as NESPA made it known this was a priority in the beginning of the bargaining sessions, the district states.

The result of this “move up” is that a number of bargaining unit members would have received raises of between 19% and 38% in the year of the wage adjustment.

The District had also conceded that the two-tier benefit plan for the employees in the current collective bargaining agreement would be eliminated.

By agreeing to eliminate the two-tier benefit plan, bargaining unit members would have had quicker access to health benefits as well as holidays and vacation time, and there would no longer be any probationary period for benefits to begin for eligible employees and their dependents.

As a cost-saving measure, the District sought to introduce a high deductible plan as one of the health insurance options for the bargaining unit members, but with employer contributions to a health savings account for the association members who selected the high deductible plan in order to offset the impact on bargaining unit members of the higher deductibles.

Neshaminy’s Board of School Directors and administration said they are "extremely disappointed" in the vote's outcome.

"While the district is ready to re-engage in what could turn out to be a long and arduous process, the district has conveyed that the offer that had been agreed upon is at the upper-most limit of burden that we, as your elected representatives, believe our taxpayers will support," the statement said.