Negotiations continue for local teachers and support staff but the parties are at odds.
The Kenai Peninsula Education and Support Associations’ spokesman Matt Fischer says the unions are waiting on a response from the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District on what was verbally offered last Wednesday.
Fischer: “It’s called a supposal, that’s kind of part of the process, you throw things out like suppose we do this, how would that work for you? That’s what their attorney asked for, he didn’t ask for a proposal. We though we were getting somewhere that maybe they’re actually going to sit down and work together and we can move forward. And then of course we saw the release from the District and we thought apparently we’re not working together.”
Fischer added that he doesn’t know why the district is trying to tackle healthcare ahead of proposals on salaries and contract lengths because those topics all work hand-in-hand with each other.
Fischer: “The District’s looking at their overall financial budget and if you go up in one, you might go down in another. There are definitely give and takes between those two things so to look at them separately you would have a really hard time doing. If you want to work together and say lets get a little bit closer on this one, then we’ll look at salaries, that’s okay.”
He says the district’s new proposed high-deductible health care model puts all of the risk on employees because there he does not see the proof that this “experiment” will work.
Wednesday(tomorrow) marks the one week that the District said they would respond to the unions’ supposal.
