"If you don't like it, get out,"

From the Intelligencer. It looks like Souderton is running down the same stretch of road as Morrisville. No money and fixed-income retirees combining with the requirement to provide an education to the local children.

Teachers predict 'brain drain' if they don't get pay raises
By LOU SESSINGER

The union is asking for an 8.2 percent increase. The district is offering 2.57 percent.

As they have for several months, Souderton Area School District teachers spoke at Thursday night's school board meeting to express their dismay at the contract impasse between the board and the Souderton Area Education Association, the teachers union.

Six teachers came to the podium during the public comment portion of the meeting. Their common theme was that they and their colleagues deserved pay raises that would put their salaries in line with those of other school districts in the area. If not, some of them warned, the district could suffer a "brain drain" of sorts as the best teachers leave to seek better pay elsewhere.

The members of the Souderton Area Education Association went on strike in early September, delaying the opening of school until Sept. 19. The teachers union and school board then entered non-binding arbitration, which is still going on.

Teachers are seeking a four-year contract with annual salary increases compounded at an average of 8.2 percent a year. The school board is offering a three-year contract with annual salary increases compounded at an average of 2.57 percent a year.

School board President Bernard S. Currie on Thursday night pointed out that an arbitration panel is still conducting closed-door hearings on the last best offers of the board and union, and so contract negotiations are at a standstill until the panel releases its recommendations, which are expected in the spring.

High school science teacher Kenneth Hamilton said he had experienced a "loss of faith" in the school board's willingness to seek a fair settlement.

High school learning support teacher Sandra Campagna said she hoped both sides would be willing to accept the arbitrators' recommendations they could "work on a settlement together."

Janet Smith, a fifth-grade teacher at Salford Hills Elementary, said she wanted to "dispel the myth" that it would be easy for the school district to rebuild the quality of its teaching staff if there were a "mass exodus of teachers" driven away by low pay.

"We are not dime-a-dozen teachers," she said. "We live next door and have close community ties. Shame on this board + we are dedicated teachers and not a dime a dozen."

But two members of the community who addressed the board rejected the teachers' arguments and supported the board's negotiating position.

Charl Wellener said she had lost faith with the teachers and thought their contract demands were not motivated by a desire for fairness but by greed.

If teachers were unhappy with their salaries, she said, they should seek employment elsewhere.

Hugh Donnelly agreed.

"If you don't like it, get out," he said, adding that 20 percent of the district's property taxpayers were age 60 and over.

"They don't have kids in school, but they have to pay taxes. Eight and a half percent (a year pay raise) is obscene."