Dear Collingswood Community,
As you may be aware, the Collingswood Board of Education has been engaged in negotiations with the Collingswood Education Association (CEA) for an updated collective bargaining agreement since February 2024. Once agreed upon, this updated agreement would be the new contract for teachers and educational support professionals in our district. As the Board’s Negotiations Committee, we write to provide the community with an update on the current status of negotiations.
The Board has been focused on ensuring that the district can meet the needs of our community’s children as best as possible given the current difficult economic realities of our school budget. This year, our school district was one of the many across NJ where lack of appropriate state funding and legal limits on how much tax revenue can be increased have combined with continually rising costs to create budgetary shortfalls. Unfortunately, these shortfalls have required difficult layoffs of teaching and administrative staff.
Even in the midst of these difficult cuts, the Board has remained committed to continuing the district’s existing practice of providing annual raises in line with the county average to its teachers and staff. Indeed, over the last several years, the Board has amicably negotiated and agreed upon salary increases in line with county average for all of our collective bargaining associations, including in June 2022 with our principals and supervisors association, in March 2022 with our buildings and services association, and in February 2021 with the CEA. More recently in June 2023, Oaklyn Public Schools, our sister district which shares the same superintendent and business administrator, agreed to salary increases in line with the county average.
Since February, the Board’s Negotiations Committee has met jointly with the CEA five times: on February 28th, March 14th, April 17th, May 6th, and June 13th. As reported in the June 14, 2024, issue of The Retrospect, the CEA unilaterally declared an impasse during the May 6th meeting. The CEA subsequently filed a request for mediation with the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC). The Board’s Negotiations Committee did not agree with the CEA’s declaration of impasse and expressed to the CEA the Board’s willingness to continue direct negotiations. While we met once more with the CEA on June 13th, our next negotiation will be led by a PERC mediator in August, per CEA’s request.
The Board’s Negotiations Committee believes that our offers made during negotiations have been fair and made in good faith. While the CEA has rejected our offers, we would be unable to meet demands for salary increases significantly higher than county average because doing so would necessarily lead to additional layoffs and cuts in programming starting in the upcoming 2024-25 school year. During these negotiations, the Board has remained hopeful that an agreement could be reached before June 30, 2024. However, the likelihood of this timeline now seems slim.
We recognize that there may be concerns within the community about what this lack of agreement will mean for the children of Collingswood when school begins again in September. As fellow Collingswood residents, community members, and parents, we understand these concerns and want to make clear that, despite statements to the contrary, the district’s current contract with the CEA remains in effect until a new contract is agreed upon. No contractual or legal barriers exist to the regular operation of the school district, including sports and extracurricular clubs, come September 2024.
As we approach the end of this school year, the Board remains hopeful that a mutual agreement can be reached with the CEA. We remain committed to the collective bargaining process and will participate fully in good faith with the next steps of the process.
Sincerely,
Collingswood Board of Education, Negotiations Committee