Nov 1, 2016 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – Central Greene’s teachers will see an average salary increase of 4.3 percent over the next five years.

The new five-year contract, released by the school district Monday afternoon, was approved by the teachers union and the school board last month after more than a year of negotiations.

In the first year of the contract, teachers will see a 1.54 percent increase. Subsequent raises will be 4.3 percent in 2017-18, 4.97 percent in 2018-19, 5.63 percent in 2019-20 and 5.07 percent in 2020-21.

“While this was a long and difficult negotiations process, we are pleased to have reached an accord with the district,” Melissa Wilson, president of the teachers union, said in a news release last month when the contract was ratified. “With the challenges facing public education today, we’re hoping to build on this partnership for the benefit of the children in our classrooms.”

Superintendent Brian Uplinger said Tuesday he believes the contract resulted from the two sides meeting in the middle.

“We’re very happy it’s over and we can get back to doing what we do best on both sides, and that’s educating our kids,” he said.

Uplinger said the district will save about $105,000 over the life of the contract with a new health care plan for the teachers that will raise their copays and the cost of prescription medications.

In addition, he said the district will save about $310,000 by requiring teachers to pay a monthly premium for their health insurance – a decision necessitated by increasing health care costs.

“The increases in health care are making it very difficult for the district to sustain alone,” he said in an email.

The teachers won’t have to pay a premium until the 2017-18 year of the contract, and it initially will be $12 a month for an employee, or $25 a month for an employee and a spouse or family. The premiums will go up the following years to $25/$50, followed by $35/$65 and $40/$75 in the final year of the contract, 2020-2021.

Wilson said she understands the district’s need for the teachers to make the contribution because “we were one of the last standing associations in the state that wasn’t paying a monthly premium.”

She said for most of the teachers, their raises will balance out what they’ll be paying for their premiums. Wilson said most of them will either “break even or have a little money left over from the pay increases.”

Health care will change for retiring teachers, as well, Uplinger said, which could act as a retirement incentive for some.

During the first three years of the contract, a teacher who retires will stay on the district’s health-care plan for 10 years, or until they qualify for Medicare, Uplinger said. But as of the 2019-20 school year, teachers who retire will be given $15,000 to be placed in a health-care retirement account, he said.

“The retirees will be able to choose their own health-care plan from the marketplace or from Highmark,” Uplinger said in an email. “There will be a savings when people retiring after 2018-2019 move to the HRA.”

Uplinger said that over the five years, the contract’s cost to the district will increase by an average of 3.4 percent per year. Uplinger did not have a dollar amount for how much the contract will cost the district overall, or how that number differs from the teachers’ previous contract.

The district’s business manager, Jim Shargots, declined to comment on the contract.