Page 6 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • May 2, 2012 Mahwah May 2 meeting not expected to produce contract by Frank J. McMahon A May 2 meeting has been scheduled, but the session is not expected to produce a contract between the Mahwah Board of Education and the Mahwah Education Association, which represents the district’s teachers, secretaries, nurses, custodians, maintenance staff, school bus drivers, and school aides. That was the prediction of Charles Saldarini, chairman of the school board’s Negotiating Committee and Edward Deptula, the district’s business administrator, at the last public board meeting. Deptula explained that there are no hard and fast rules for the meeting with the state-appointed mediator. He said he expects that the New Jersey Education Association will make a presentation at the meeting about what they think the district can afford to offer the MEA, and the committee will present what it feels it can afford to offer. Then the mediator has 30 days to make a recommendation that is not binding on either side. “I’m hopeful that with other meetings we might have with the MEA we may not have to wait for the mediator’s recommendation,” Deptula told Richard Gordon, a Joyce Kilmer School teacher who asked what the board hopes will happen at the meeting with the mediator. The MEA and the school board have been involved in negotiations since February 2010, four months before the prior contract with the MEA expired on June 30, 2010. In March 2010, following two negotiating sessions with the MEA, the union filed a petition with the Public Employees Relations Commission to go to an impasse process. When an impasse is declared in negotiations, a mediator and then a fact finder are assigned by the state. The state-appointed individuals review the facts presented by both sides and make a non-binding recommendation for settlement. The specific points of contention in this dispute are not public. However, one of the issues the MEA claims is blocking an agreement is the use of the teachers’ time at meetings. The MEA is also concerned about who sets the meeting agendas, and the board’s proposal that the days on which Back to School Night is scheduled be full days for students and teachers as opposed to the current half-days. Saldarini advised in March that the school board had proposed salary increases of 2.5 percent for the 2011-12 and (continued on page 10)