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<b>First Posted:</b> 8/21/2008<br><br>By Mark Guydish mguydish@www.timesleader.comEducation Reporter 
UNION TWP. &amp;ndash; With the start of school less than two weeks away, the Northwest Area teachers union has ramped up efforts to win community support in the ongoing contract dispute.

It is sending letters to parents, giving the school board a new contract proposal and posting new data on its Web site that, the union contends, prove the board has been the cause of the negotiation standoff.
Insisting it has offered &amp;ldquo;several fair and equitable contract proposals over the last three years only to see them rejected,&amp;rdquo; the union noted it had made another offer in time for Wednesday&amp;rsquo;s board meeting. 
The union kept with its policy of not publicizing details, but Board Member Al Gordon outlined key changes. Gordon said the union&amp;rsquo;s new five-year offer cut the average pay raise from 3.5 percent the first year three years and 3.8 the last two years to 3.3 and 3.5 percent, respectively. The pay raises would be retroactive for the past three years. The contract expired in 2005.
In March, the union broke with a longstanding refusal to pay part of the health insurance premium, a key sticking point in the negotiations. That offer amounted to teachers paying $6 to $10 per two-week pay period. Gordon said that under the proposal, teachers have offered to pay the lower amount of either 1.5 percent of the premium or 1 percent of salary this coming school year, and 2 percent of premium or 1 percent of salary in 2009-10. Those would be the last two years of the contract. 
The union repeated its claim that the offer could be met with no tax increase, thanks partly to a surplus of more than $2.1 million, but Gordon repeated the board&amp;rsquo;s contention that that surplus will be exhausted by retroactive pay.
The union also made the dual claim that veteran teachers have been retiring in large numbers since the contract dispute began, and that those retirements are saving the district money &amp;ndash; as much as $500,000 a year. 
&amp;ldquo;They can work their numbers and say what they want,&amp;rdquo; Gordon said, &amp;ldquo;but I really doubt that.&amp;rdquo; He said many retirements are the result of an early-retirement incentive that offers a bonus of up to 65 percent of salary depending how many years a teacher has been working, with the bonus shrinking with longevity. He also noted the union has asked for a 5 percent increase in that incentive.
And the union made a somewhat complicated claim that Northwest Area has the &amp;ldquo;highest state subsidy per pupil in the county,&amp;rdquo; and a low &amp;ldquo;local tax effort,&amp;rdquo; a state-calculated number comparing a district&amp;rsquo;s &amp;ldquo;Wealth&amp;rdquo; (taxable property and income) to its tax rate. 
But Gordon countered by noting Northwest may have a low &amp;ldquo;tax effort,&amp;rdquo; but that the rural district also gets the lowest amount of money for a mill of property tax, which is a $1 tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value. 
The 4-mill tax hike implemented this year, Gordon said, will only raise about $68,000 more than last year. By comparison, he noted, there are Luzerne County districts that would net that much or more with a single mill increase.

Northwest Area teachers offer proposal