Trying to make sense of Harvard’s current teacher contract negotiations impasse, with its conflicting and impassioned arguments from the two dug-in sides, is a real challenge. The teachers complain that they are undervalued and disrespected; the other town employees, the selectmen and Finance Committee, and many residents see the teachers as unwilling to shoulder their fair share of the belt-tightening required by the town’s precarious financial situation; and the school board, students, and parents are stuck in the middle.
—School Committee
It makes one long for the days when the teachers asked for 4 percent cost-of-living increases, the school board offered 2 percent, they finally settled for 3 percent, and it was all wrapped up nine months before the contract ran out. But this time, the two sides have been talking for over a year, some of the time with the help of a paid mediator, and have not reached a settlement. The teachers, angered that they are working without a contract, are now picketing and working to rule.
The main sticking point this year revolves around how much teachers have to pay towards their health insurance costs. All other town employees moved from paying 10 percent of their insurance costs to 30 percent a couple of years ago, and the school board is insisting the teachers do the same in the new contract. As of October, the teachers had offered to increase their health insurance contributions to 20 percent over two years, with new hires paying 30 percent, as long as all teachers, even ones not currently getting health insurance through the town, receive a permanent salary increase, called an offset, to cover those extra costs over the life of the contract. This would be on top of a proposed 3 percent cost-of-living increase for all teachers, as well as the step increases that teachers receive for attaining higher levels of education or just gaining another year of experience in teaching, (which teachers stop getting once they have taught for 13 years.)
School board’s offer
The school board in October offered a contract that would move the current teachers over four years to a 70/30 split in insurance costs. New hires would have to pay 30 percent immediately. There would be additional money for the 82 percent of teachers now getting health insurance through the town; with more money going to teachers getting family coverage, which costs more. The school board says most teachers would receive enough extra money to cover the increased insurance costs. However, the school board called this money “stipends,” which is not a permanent increase to the teachers’ salary schedule, and is different from an offset, which is built into the salary schedule. The board also offered a 2.5 percent cost-of-living increase.
There is an excellent reason that the school board and selectmen want to shift more of the health insurance burden to employees: skyrocketing costs. The current annual cost for family health insurance plans offered by the town range from $12,300 for the Fallon HMO to $14,424 for the Tufts HMO.
These are very comprehensive HMO health insurance plans. The co-pays for doctor visits are five to ten dollars, and there are no charges for hospital in-patient costs. However, the Fallon, Harvard Pilgrim, and Tufts health plan costs have generally seen double-digit increases annually, and last year went up another 15 to 22 percent. With the town paying the lion’s share of the bill, the health insurance costs to the town have been real budget-busters. Even with some kind of offset or stipend paid to teachers in the next contract, shifting more of the cost to teachers will eventually help keep town costs down. The savings to Harvard if the teachers pay an additional 10 percent of the premiums is estimated at $90,000.
The teachers say that they have been willing to compromise, by going to an 80/20 split in costs. Going all the way to 70/30, even if the other town employees are there, would make it more difficult for the town to attract and keep good teachers, they argue. In fact, there is a range of cost-sharing of health insurance premiums in nearby towns. Lunenburg is at 90/10; Acton is at 85/15; Boxborough, 80/20; Groton-Dunstable, 78/22; Littleton, Bolton, Lancaster, and Stow all at 70/30. Westford has a two-tiered system, where HMO premiums are split 65/35 and PPO plans are at 60/40. All towns are asking employees to shoulder a greater share of the bill.
Teacher pay
Of course, having good benefits has always been one of the perks of a teaching job, along with a shorter work-year, even if the total pay wasn’t stellar. How does Harvard’s teacher pay compare to that in nearby towns?
The average teacher in Harvard last year made $60,466, according to town Finance Manager Lorraine Leonard. Benefits are not included in the calculation. The current contract stipulates that the teachers work 185 days a year. The Bromfield teachers have to be in school for 7 hours and 20 minutes, and get one preparation period a day. The elementary teachers have to be at school for seven hours, and have 35 minutes of that for prep time.
Of course, teachers also work at home, and some put in extraordinarily long hours, at night and during vacations. But just for comparison’s sake, I tried to figure out a rough estimate of what that average Harvard teacher makes on an hourly basis. If you assume a 45-hour work-week (a bit over six hours a day of teaching, with not quite half that amount for preparation and grading, so nine hours for each of those 185 days), that adds up to 1,665 hours worked a year. Divide that into the average teacher salary, and you get just over $36 an hour. Teachers also receive additional stipends for coaching athletic teams or running extracurricular clubs, paid by parents in the form of user fees.
Salary comparision
The Harvard teacher salaries seem pretty competitive, if you compare them with other similar towns listed on the state department of education website. It lists Harvard’s average salary as $60,409 in 2004–05, the most recent year for which data is available (calculated slightly differently than Harvard does it.) Only Concord-Carlisle Regional High School had a higher average salary among the nearby school systems, at $61,386. The kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers of those towns were paid less: $57,814 for Carlisle and $58,669 for Concord. The Nashoba regional school system, serving Bolton, Lancaster, and Stow, paid on average $57,029. Acton paid $59,266, Boxborough $56,440 and Acton-Boxborough, $59,855. Littleton’s teachers only averaged $52,251.
In addition, Harvard’s salaries appeared to be going up faster than the other towns’, if you look at increases from, say, 2001–02 to 2004–05 on the state website. In the earlier year, the average Harvard teacher made $45,335. Going up to $60,409 in three years is quite a jump. However, averages can be deceiving; those were the years Harvard was laying off some newly hired, cheaper teachers while keeping the senior teachers, who are at the top of the pay scale, which may skew the numbers
If you compare the Harvard teachers who were actually there for all three years of the last teacher contract, from 2003 to 2006, the average teacher salary went up by 21.5 percent over the three years. A teacher with 13 or more years’ experience, who got no step increases, would have had a pay hike of 12.1 percent. The most increase any teacher got over the three years, including step increases, was 37.5 percent, according to Leonard.
How will it end?
How the teacher contract negotiation can come to an amicable close is hard to see at this point. Both sides are pretty well dug in, and the school board has heard from the selectmen and Finance Committee members that those boards will not support the large Proposition 2½ overrides needed to maintain current school programs over the next few years if the school board does not get the teachers down to a 70/30 health insurance cost-share scheme.
In addition, two other town employee union contract negotiations, the police and highway departments, have stalled as they wait to see if the teachers settle for a 70/30 split or not. The teachers argue that what the other town employees get, or what the other boards tell the School Committee, should be irrelevant. They feel the school board is not working hard enough to defend the quality of the schools by negotiating a fair and competitive contract.
However, as the school board says in an open letter to the teachers, parents, and community members, which is posted on its website, “accepting a contract that included anything less than a 70/30 health care split would significantly jeopardize support and passage of a much needed override…the fiscal impact of a failed override would inevitably and unfortunately force the School Committee to eliminate teaching positions, reduce program options, and increase class size. As publicly elected stewards of your school system, we feel it would be irresponsible to allow that to occur.”
