At long last
Coherent contract for Guilderland Employees Association



GUILDERLAND — For the first time in nearly two decades, the school-district workers who drive the buses, maintain the buildings, and feed the students have a substantially re-written contract.

By unanimous vote Tuesday night, the school board ratified a four-year contract with the Guilderland Employees Association, which has 207 members — not quite a quarter of the district’s employees.

The contract is retroactive to July 1, 2005 and runs through June 30, 2009.

Raises are 3.72 percent for the first year, 3.78 percent for the second year, and 3.9 percent for the third and fourth years of the contract.
School board President Richard Weisz called the contract "a significant negotiation" and said it was "a great effort" on both sides.
"I’m glad it’s done," said board member Peter Golden. "I know it’s been a long time."

Bruce Shank, the association’s president, told The Enterprise that the vote among members had been 150 for the contract, and 20 against.
What he is most pleased about, Shank said, is, "We got to rework the whole contract. It hadn’t been updated in years."

He and Treasurer Joseph Neil estimated it had been 18 years.

Shank praised school administrators for the time and effort they put in. Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Susan Tangorre and Assistant Superintendent for Business Neil Sanders negotiated for the school district. Attorney Thomas Jordan represented the association.
The workers left the National Education Association about 13 months ago. "We’re on our own now," said Shank. "The NEA wasn’t getting the job done for us."
The biggest problem, he said, was the relationship the union had with the district. Shank, who has been president of the unit for three years, said, "If you treat people respectful, you get that back."
Tangorre, who has been head of human resources for two-and-a-half years, said yesterday, "We have 12 bargaining units"of very different kinds of people who do different kinds of jobs. We need them all to function as a district".
"Neil and I have approached each group with an equal level of respect"I always value people. It’s a great deal about respect. When you model that, you get the same in return."

"Common ground"
The contract was delayed not because of any standoff in negotiations, but because the association was changing its affiliation. "We were all waiting to start the minute they got acknowledged from PERB," said Tangorre of the Public Employment Relations Board.
The negotiation process itself took time, Tangorre said, because the core contract was at least 18 years old and had many disjointed modifications. "It was really a compilation of about 20 different documents, not bound together in sequential order," she said. "It was really very difficult for employees to know their rights and benefits and for management."
The mission was to write a single contract "in laymen’s terms," said Tangorre. "We took out the ‘whereas’es," she said. Yesterday, she said, she was still doing the final editing on the 42-page document, in preparation for its signing.
Tangorre termed it "a very unusual but collaborative process."
While Jordan said the association was pleased with the contract, he said, "I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘collaborative.’"
"We found some common ground," he said. "We both agreed the document was insufficient. We worked on the language to clarify purpose, to prevent grievances and misunderstandings. It was really cooperation," he said.

Raises
The new contract "represents significant gains in compensation," said Jordan.
The wages it outlines, he said, are "comparable if not better than groups in other school districts." He termed the raises "fair, given the cost of living increases everyone is facing."
Jordan went on, "They’re not exorbitant. Most of our members are Guilderland residents and it could affect school-district taxes" if raises were too high.

Tangorre listed for The Enterprise the range of hourly wages for each of the three major categories of workers.

For the current school year, an entry-level custodial worker earns $11.44 and a 10-year worker — at the top step — earns $17.24. In the final year of the contract, 2008-09, an entry-level worker would earn $12.35 and a 10-year worker, $18.61.

A food-service worker at the entry level now earns $9.65 and, in the final year, will earn $10.42. while a 10-year worker now earns $12.95 and, at the end of the contract, will earn $13.98.

A bus driver at the entry level now earns $13.93 an hour and in 2008-09 will earn $15.03 while a 10-year bus driver now earns $20.41 and in the last year of the contract will earn $22.04.

About a third of the association members are part-time workers, said Tangorre.

Changes

The new contract sets up a more extensive evaluation system. Workers will now be rated at five levels — unsatisfactory, needs improvement, satisfactory, exceeds expectations, and outstanding.
"Outstanding" is a new category, said Tangorre and, while there are no monetary rewards for the designation, there are psychological benefits, she said. "There are no trips to Aruba," she quipped. "We’re not a corporation."

New employees will be evaluated their first year and, after that, at least once every three years, she said, in five categories — work habits, job knowledge, quality of work, quantity of work, and job attitude.
"Both employees and evaluators make comments," Tangorre said, and there is a written plan for improvement with follow-up within 60 days.
"At each step, the employee has a right to make a comment," said Tangorre.
"Setting forth expectations of employees is a great step forward," said Jordan. "It represents progress". The employees are looking for what the employer expects in terms of job performance. We’ve put in clear expectations. That was never there before. And we’ve set specific time periods for when evaluations should occur."
In the past, Jordan said, workers had not been evaluated "in a timely manner."
Also, he said, for the first time, there will be "objective standards for those evaluations."
Another change Tangorre highlighted from the contract is that the district will provide uniforms for custodial workers, cooks, and food-service workers, so they will be "easily identifiable to the public."
Also, she said, while random drug testing is required by law for bus drivers, the contract also includes it for bus attendants. "They’re the people who are attending to our children," said Tangorre.

A final change is the creation of a labor-management committee. It will be made up of six members — Shank, Tangorre, Sanders, and representatives from food services, transportation, and building and grounds.
The committee will meet regularly, she said. The intent, she said, is not to go directly to grievance. "We can have conversations on contractual issues, safety issues, training or in-service, anything that involves change, like the school calendar," said Tangorre. "It provides a forum for bringing concerns and working out solutions."
"One of the problems the district had in the past," said Jordan, "was there was no effective means to communicate ideas."
The association, he said, has "quite a cross-section" of workers. The majority are bus drivers and so discussion of issues was often dominated by bus drivers, said Jordan.
"Now all issues will be voiced," he said.

Budget review

No members of the public spoke Tuesday at the state-required hearing on the school budget.

Sanders reviewed the $81,942,000 budget proposal and the other three propositions on which voters will decide May 15:

— $835,000 to purchase 11 school buses and a maintenance truck;

— $175,000 to buy eight-tenths of an acre of land on Route 20 in front of Guilderland Elementary School;

— $600,000 to establish a capital reserve fund for renovations to the district’s elementary schools.
Money for the last two propositions would come from the district’s surplus fund balance, Sanders said, "at no additional cost to the school district."

Polls are open at each of Guilderland’s five elementary schools from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Sanders also went over tax rates. This year’s school tax rate for town of Guilderland residents was $18.93 per $1,000 of assessed valuation. Since the average house in Guilderland is assessed at $180,000, Sanders said, the average homeowner paid $3,407.04 in school taxes.

If the budget passes, the estimated rate for next year would be $19.40, meaning owners of the same $180,000 house would pay $3,491.53, or about $7.05 more per month in school taxes, Sanders said.
"There are a lot of things to vote on," said school board President Richard Weisz.

In addition to a five-way race for three school board seats, the Guilderland Public Library has two candidates on the ballot for trustees in an uncontested race. The library, which follows school- district boundaries, but is governed by its own board, has a $2.8 million budget up for vote.
To read in-depth coverage of library and school budgets and of school board candidates, go to www.altamontenterprise.com and look under "archives" and then under "Guilderland" for these dates: School budget stories appeared on March 8 and 29 and on April 12; the library budget was reviewed on April 26. School board candidates were profiled on April 19, interviewed on issues on April 26, and the race was covered on May 3.

Contingency budget

If a school budget is voted down, a school board has three choices. It can put the same budget up for vote again one more time. It can come up with a different budget for voters to decide on. Or it can move to a contingency budget.

Last year, Guilderland’s proposed budget, which passed on the first vote, was less than the contingency budget, based on a state-set cap.
"That should never happen again," said Sanders, based on the state’s new approach.

Sanders told the school board Tuesday night about the recent changes the state has made in formulating contingency budgets.
"When they change the definitions three times in two weeks," said Weisz, "there’s this feeling maybe it’s not the concrete line it’s supposed to be."

Sanders said that, in 1998, the state’s legislature capped contingency budgets at 20 percent above the Consumer Price Index or a 4-percent increase, whichever is less.

The first formulation this year excepted debt service and meant, if Guilderland’s $82 million budget were defeated twice, $560,000 would have to be cut.

Then, Sanders said, the state determined foundation aid could be excluded from the cap like debt service. That calculation put Guilderland’s $81,942,000 budget proposal $369,000 below the contingency cap.

Then last week, Sanders said, the state made a further clarification. If a district’s budget proposal, like Guilderland’s, came out to be less than the contingency budget, it would revert to a different model where contingent items would be backed out, so a contingent budget would always be less than a proposed budget.

Under this model, a contingency budget for Guilderland would be $368,500 less than the proposal taxpayers will vote on on May 15.
"The contingent budget changes with what the state wants to convey to taxpayers," said Weisz.
He also said that the point of the state’s most recent formulation is "so the taxpayers have a feeling, if they say no, it matters."