{"id":5582,"date":"2015-07-24T05:29:58","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T09:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=5582"},"modified":"2015-07-24T00:13:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T04:13:59","slug":"new-contract-approved-for-brick-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2015\/07\/new-contract-approved-for-brick-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"New Contract Approved for Brick Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brick<\/a>

Brick Township Board of Education\/Schools (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Board of Education on Thursday night voted in favor of approving a new pact with the Brick district\u2019s teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe negotiations committee for the board went through the process, worked with my office, to make sure the contract that is hopefully going to go in effect is fair and balanced,\u201d said Paul Kalac, an attorney who the district hired to serve on the negotiating committee since three of the board\u2019s current six members have relatives who work in the district.<\/p>\n

The contract, which runs through June 30, 2018, does not include traditional flat percentage wage increases for district employees. Instead, the contract takes a percentage of the total salary base and increases it, while simultaneously drawing down the cost of health benefits.<\/p>\n

For example, Kalac explained, the current salary base for all teachers is approximately $58 million. The contract takes 3.41 percent of that figure in the first year, then applies that to come up with a new base.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not mean all employees get that percentage increase,\u201d Kalac said.<\/p>\n

The same methodology is repeated for years two and three of the contract, when the salary base will be increased by 3.3 percent and 3.19 percent.<\/p>\n

Explained simply: \u201cThe teachers are not getting a raise on top of their step increase,\u201d said Kalac. \u201cThey are just moving up a step on their guide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first year of the contract is \u201cessentially a wash,\u201d said Kalac, explaining that when the increases in salary are tempered with concessions in the cost of teachers\u2019 health insurance coverage, the district\u2019s cost will only total about $145,000 more in the first year, with similar modest increases in the remaining years. The cost of health benefits will decline by about $1.9 million in year one of the contract alone, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo get a change in insurance in this day and age is quite an accomplishment,\u201d Kalac said.<\/p>\n

The contract was approved with all board members except Michael Conti voting in favor of the contract. Conti, whose wife is a teacher in the district, abstained from voting even though he legally would have been able to do so under the state\u2019s so-called \u201cdoctrine of necessity\u201d provision.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Board of Education on Thursday night voted in favor of approving a new pact with the Brick district\u2019s teachers. \u201cThe negotiations committee for the board went through the process, worked with my office, to make sure the contract that is hopefully going to go in effect is fair and balanced,\u201d said Paul Kalac, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[24,1539,471,592],"class_list":["post-5582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brick-schools","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-brick-township-education-association","tag-btea","tag-teachers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DSC_0004.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-1s2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}