Oct 13, 2017 3 min read

Teachers in Ringgold School District plan to strike next week after rejecting a fact-finder’s recommendation for a new contract.

The 200 members of the Pennsylvania State Education Association will strike Wednesday “in order to convince the school district to ‘Say Yes’ to a fair contract,” the union announced Friday.

“A strike is the last thing we want to do,” said Maria Degnan, president of Ringgold Education Association.

“We are calling a work stoppage because, although we have been bargaining in good faith for a successor contract since July 2016, the district has been unwilling to reach a reasonable agreement in key areas of the contract,” Degnan said in a news release.

The union has been working without a contract since July 1.

The teachers unanimously rejected the fact-finding report for a second time on Thursday, Degnan said.

“The fact-finding report does nothing more than further the already large disparity in educator salaries in the area,” Degnan said.

“Ringgold’s salaries are the lowest among the 105 closest school districts, and this report would do nothing but increase that disparity,” she added.

The union said the teachers are willing to meet with the district at any time to avoid the strike.

School board President William Stein said negotiations were scheduled to resume with a state mediator Oct. 23.

“Unfortunately, their decision to strike will have a negative effect on our students and further complicates the negotiation process,” Stein said.

The fact finder, who was appointed by the state Labor Relations Board, issued recommendations Sept. 25 that later were approved by the school board, said Karen Polkabla, district superintendent.

Proposed salary increases for teachers would have raised the salary range from between $36,000 and $78,508 a year last term to between $41,439 and $83,947 a year by the end of a five-year contract, depending on education levels and years of employment, district records show. However, the union noted that the proposed contract would freeze all of the teachers at their current salary steps, preventing them from advancing. That means, said the union, that at the end of the contract, a first-year, newly hired teacher would be paid the same as a teacher who had been with the district for five years.

“We are extremely disappointed by the REA’s decision to go on strike,” Stein said. “The board remains committed to arriving at a contract that is both fair to our teachers and the taxpayers of the Ringgold School District.”