Thank you to all of the SOMEA members who attended last night’s Board of Education meeting. For those who did not attend, please know that the BOE did ratify the agreement. Since both sides have ratified, we are officially settled.
Some questions came up at the meeting regarding how the board is reporting information to the state. From the discussion on the board, it appears that they have inflated the SOMEA teaching staff salaries by including other items in the salary line item.
When we negotiate salaries, we use a scattergram. A scrattergram is a snapshot of where every single member is currently placed on the salary guide. Once the scattergram is signed off by both sides, this is what we use in negotiations to develop future salary guides and settlement offers. We distributed that scattergram in the ratification packet for all members to review.
We are concerned by the information questioned last night and are investigating why the board is inflating salary numbers to the state.
We have a scheduled meeting with the administrators for Thursday to discuss this further.
In addition, many questions came up at the ratification meeting and voting about placement on the salary guides. We did discuss this concern with the administrators and will be working on establishing a formal grid that they will use when they are hiring staff. For example, if you have been in district for 5 years, the compression of the guide places you on step 1. When they hire someone with 5 years of experience outside of the district, they should also be placed on step 1. Mr. Memoli did indicate that he has been using a grid, but we plan on making this a SOMEA initiative in order to make sure that the hiring practices are fair for everyone.
Thank you for your continued support to SOMEA and we hope you are having a great summer.
Paula and Hannah