February 19, 2014 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 3 FLOW Area RIHEA members mobilize for new contract by Frank J. McMahon About 60 members of the Ramapo Indian Hills Education Association attended last week’s board of education meeting to rally for a new contract. The RIHEA represents about 300 mem- bers, including the school district’s teach- ers, supplemental teachers, administrative assistants, tech assistants, instructional aides, security, custodians, and mainte- nance and grounds employees. Their contract expired on June 30, 2013 and they have been working without a new contract since then. The negotiations for a new contract were declared to be at impasse and a mediator was assigned by the state’s Public Employ- ment Relations Commission in the hope of reaching a voluntary settlement. Cherylin Roeser, vice president and chief negotiator for the RIHEA, read a strongly worded statement on behalf of the RIHEA members, saying they were there “to express their frustration, disap- pointment, and anger at the disrespect and disengagement that the board of education continues to show the 300 plus members of the RIHEA.” “We work extremely hard every day to make this district work well and smoothly and to do our best for the students of the FLOW communities,” Roeser said. “In whatever role we fulfill, be it teacher, supplemental teacher, instructional tech- nology, administrative assistant, teacher’s aide, custodian, security, we do our jobs and we do them well. “We do not deserve the continued disre- spect that the board of education’s intransi- gence and apparent indifference to settling the contract displays. It is demoralizing; it is discouraging; it is demeaning.” Roeser claimed that teachers in the sur- rounding area earn more than those in the Ramapo Indian Hills School District, which she said is losing great teachers every year because they can go to almost any other district in Bergen County and earn $5,000, $6,000, even $10,000 more. She referred to an unnamed school dis- trict she said was not far from Ramapo Baker retrospective set During the month of March, High Mountain Presbyterian Church in Franklin Lakes will mount a retrospective exhibit of prints and paintings by Cornelia Baker (1929-2013). The exhibit will include works created over the course of Baker’s career, including monotypes, serigraphs, paintings on canvas, and giclée prints on paper and canvas. All exhibited work will be priced for sale. Baker, a Franklin Lakes resident for 50 years, worked out of her home studio and at the Art Center of Northern Jersey. She was inspired by everyday objects found around her home and immediate surround- ings and the architecture she encountered in her travels. The opening reception will be held Sunday, March 2 from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Gallery at the High Mountain Presbyterian Church, 730 Franklin Lake Road in Frank- lin Lakes. The public is invited and light refreshments will be served. The gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Indian Hills where teachers who have left RIH over the past five years are earning more as first-year teachers there than they would earn at RIH after several years. She also claimed that a first-year teacher in that district makes almost $5,000 more in that first year than a Ramapo Indian Hills teacher who has been at RIH for six years. “You have money for everything and everyone else,” Roeser told the school board, “except for the people (who) actu- ally do the job of making this school dis- trict work, of educating the students each day, and caring for and about them each day.” Roeser asked the school board to change priorities and put education and those who educate the students of the FLOW (Frank- lin Lakes, Oakland, Wyckoff) communi- ties in the forefront. “No matter what job we have in this dis- trict,” Roeser concluded, “RIHEA mem- bers all work to educate the students and we want this board of education to work just as hard to settle this contract now.” Roeser’s comments were applauded by the RIHEA members before they left the meeting. The school board did not respond to Roeser’s comments but, after the meet- ing, Board President Thomas Bunting and trustee Elizabeth Pierce, who is the chair- person of the board’s Negotiations Com- mittee, advised that a mediation meeting is scheduled for Feb. 27 and they released the following statement: “The RIH Board is ready and willing to negotiate in good faith with the RIHEA. We want to negoti- ate a fair and equitable settlement for both parties as well.” The last contract between the school district and the RIHEA was ratified in June 2011, a year after that previous contract expired. That three-year contract called for salary increases of two percent in the first year and 2.5 percent in the second and third years of the contract. The RIHEA, however, agreed to freez- ing the special school advisor and athletic coach stipends for the term of that con- tract and to contain health insurance costs by eliminating the traditional indemnity health plan in favor of providing all eli- gible employees the option of enrolling in either of two managed health care plans that mirror the benefits offered under the state’s School Employees Health Benefit Program.