Hempfield teachers agree to pay freeze - LancasterOnline 03/14/2011

Hempfield teachers agree to pay freeze
Intelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era

Updated Mar 14, 2011 18:00

By BRIAN WALLACE, Staff Writer

Hempfield School District teachers apparently made history Monday by becoming the first unionized teachers in Pennsylvania to agree to a wage freeze next year.

Monday's 420-53 vote by Hempfield Education Association will save the district about $1.5 million in salaries and benefits and help reduce the threat of layoffs as Hempfield seeks to balance its 2011-2012 budget in the face of a multimillion-dollar deficit.

Unionized teachers in other parts of Pennsylvania have recently considered wage-freeze requests but rejected them. Prior to Monday night's vote, an official with the Pennsylvania State Education Association said he was not aware of any other teachers who had agreed to a freeze.

Hempfield educators were slated to get raises averaging 3.725 percent next year. As a result of the vote, those hikes won't kick in until 2012-13, and the teachers' contract will continue for an additional year, through 2014-15.

School board president Bill Jimenez said the vote is "an example of the commitment and dedication to our students and community that we see every day."

"Our members put our students first," union president Jason Ohrel said in a prepared statement. "We always have — and we did it again today."

Now that teachers have agreed to the freeze, every Hempfield employee will forgo raises next year, saving the district about $2 million, superintendent Brenda Becker said.

"We're all making sacrifices across the board," she said. "We really feel that we're a school community here, and when times get tough, we're going to face it together and work together to overcome whatever challenges we face."

In addition to the teaching staff, which numbers about 525, 50 Hempfield administrators and 374 support staff members earlier this year agreed to freeze their pay.

Hempfield now accounts for more than half of the 1,400 public school employees in Lancaster County who have agreed to salary freezes to help districts contend with rising costs, steep drops in state and federal aid and flat local revenue.

Hempfield was facing a deficit of about $6 million, but the freezes, staff reductions through attrition and other cuts have narrowed that gap, and the district likely won't have to furlough any employees next year, Becker said.

bwallace@lnpnews.com

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