After a year and a half of negotiations, the Harvard teachers are still working without a new contract. This is extremely unfortunate, disruptive, and unnecessary.
Harvard is one of the top-performing school districts in the state and yet has a per-pupil expenditure that is below the state average and well below other high-performing school districts to which Harvard is often compared. Despite this excellent value, the Harvard School Committee expects the teachers to accept a huge cut in health-care benefits that is virtually unprecedented in Massachusetts public schools.
We know that health-care costs are rising and putting a strain on the town budget. We are willing to shoulder a much larger portion of the costs. We have met the School Committee halfway by agreeing to double our current health-care contribution. Last May, we proposed a settlement similar to that reached in Boxborough, which included a 100 percent increase in our health-care contribution. This proposal was rejected.
Since then, we have proposed even more concessions. Just last week, we offered to settle for a contract similar to the one just recently ratified by the Lunenburg teachers. Unfortunately, that offer, like all of our other compromise offers, was also rejected. The repeated rejection of our compromise offers is demoralizing, time-consuming, and devalues our contributions to this community.
While the School Committee has made some movement over the past several weeks, it simply hasn’t been nearly as significant as the movement we have made.
While we acknowledge that rising health-care costs are a problem for the town and we are willing to do more, we need the School Committee to acknowledge that health-care benefits are an important part of a teacher’s overall compensation package. A drastic cut in these benefits will adversely affect Harvard’s ability to attract and retain quality teachers in the future.
We truly look forward to the day when the contract is settled. To find out more, we encourage residents to visit our website at www.harvard.massteacher.org or to stop by the teachers’ information table at the Harvard Town Meeting Saturday, March 31.
The HTA Negotiating Team:
Steve Besold, Karen Deneen, Kathleen Doherty, David Gilfix, Terry Monette, Peter Murphy, and Diane Temple
