Teachers at vo-tech high school receiving 5-percent pay hike

The current economic climate has resulted in belt-tightening for many teachers. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie's clashes with teachers' unions over wage and hiring freezes have attracted nationwide attention.

In Pennsylvania, teachers in a number of York County school districts are faced with the prospect of wage freezes or even wage cuts as school districts struggle to balance their budgets.

Still more locally, teachers in the Hatboro-Horsham school district to help close budget gaps. In the neighboring Perkiomen Valley School District, negotiations with the teachers' union continue after the that recommended a slate of modest salary increases.

Within that context, it's not difficult to understand why a round of arched eyebrows and audience murmuring greeted Ed Dressler's report at the Jan. 18 Spring-Ford school board meeting that the faculty at the  vo-tech school received a five-percent pay increase for 2011.

The increase is the second of five annual five-percent increases stipulated by a labor contract that was signed in 2009.

"There's nothing we [the Spring-Ford school board] can do," said Spring-Ford school board president Joseph Ciresi when reached by telephone today.

The WMCTC, previously known as the Western Center for Technical Studies (WCTS), is administered by a joint-operating committee comprised of school board members from the Spring-Ford, Upper Perkiomen and Pottsgrove school districts.

"This was negotiated before [Spring-Ford's current representatives on the joint operating committee] joined. I find it repulsive," Ciresi said.

Dressler said Tuesday that the WMCTC's budget for 2011-12 would increase by $282,000. A total of $204,000 of that amount will help fund two new vocational programs. The bulk of the remainder will cover the contractually required salary increase.