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General News: School Employees Push for Contract
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| Pat Gilmore (left) and other union members attending the school board meeting on March 16th. |
March 26, 2009
A group of para-professionals employed by the Cornwall Central School District is pushing for a new contract, saying that the employees have gone without one now for three years. Nearly 50 union members attended the first budget presentation by the school district earlier this month and, on Monday, one of its members stood up and said they could wait no longer.
Collette Fallon, a district employee since 1998, read an impassioned statement in which she described the dedication of the teachers aides, library clerks, monitors and greeters who make as little as $12,300 a year. Fallon said that as a teacher’s aide at the high school she can be responsible for as many as 24 students in a classroom, but that she feels her work has gone unnoticed. She said that after ten years of employment, she earns $20,000.
The 88 para-professionals are members of the New York State Teachers Union and their local union president is Pat Gilmore. Gilmore says that the district has asked the union for concessions but would not make its own counter proposal until after a mediator was called in late last year. With the mediator, the district made a counter proposal that was unacceptable. “I thought it was a joke,” Gilmore said in a phone interview, “it was not even a proposal in our eyes.”
Cornwall schools assistant superintendent for business, Harvey Sotland, said he could not comment on the negotiations with the union because of their confidential nature but said if the para-professionals have any concerns they should bring them forward at the table.
Fallon said that the para-professionals are looking for increases as small as $700 to $1500 a year. She told the school board that it is “a smack in the face” that they even have to ask for this.
No one from the school board commented on Fallon’s presentation at Monday’s session, which was largely focused on the proposed $55 million school budget for the 2009-10 year. School board president Brendan Coyne did comment at the end of the meeting that he hoped that no employees would be let go as a result of budget constraints this year.
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