By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

After weeks of contentious debate, frustration was beginning to boil over at Tuesday night’s negotiating session between Hays USD 489 Board of Education and Hays National Education Association negotiating teams.

While the teams discussed retirement insurance, sick day accrual and pay raises, the session boiled down to fixing years of budget mismanagement and uncertainty with state education funding.

“We were robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said board memebr Lance Bickle said, arguing the district needs to accumulate money in order to avoid future layoffs if state funding again decreases.

But the HNEA wants to see some of that accrual used to alleviate seven years of frozen pay.

“We can’t do more than what we offered” in terms of bonus and pay, said Greg Schwartz, former school board member still representing the district in the talks.

With that message coming across, the BOE team is still lobbying to increase work hours and days.

“I can’t see teachers offering to work for six more days without an increase in pay,” said Kim Schneweis, co-chairwoman of the HNEA team.

“This isn’t all about money, it’s about having the best staff,” Schwartz said. “At some point, you can’t have everything for everybody and still operate.”

While frustration continued through the bulk of the meeting, some previous points of contention were decided upon.

The board’s team agreed to look at increasing the length of the work day through a committee, but not force it this year.

And members of the insurance committee were agreed upon, pending final approval from the HNEA team.

“But you think we have an agreement?” asked Schwartz.

“Yes” Schneweis said.

Retirement options were also on the talks with vesting options for new teachers on the table.

Both groups agreed teachers vested under the old plan could not be removed, but the way new teachers would become vested will be discussed later.

“Vesting is the only change,” Schwartz said.

Initial talks about insurance turned into a full debate of money and the message insurance sends to teachers contemplating retirement.

The debate centered around insurance benefits that extend to teachers after retirement.

The HNEA team wants to keep post-retirement insurance in place for those who operated under the assumption that it would be there, but the board’s team suggests looking at cutting the program in order to use that money for current staff.

“It was a bad deal from the start,” Schwartz said.

The HNEA team felt while it could be cut, promises made should be kept.

“Teachers expect you to keep that promise,” Schneweis said. “It should be something you plan on.

“I think that’s a dirty deal,” she said.

Along with those issues that have seen progress, concessions have been made in accrual payout, but details are still being worked out.

The HNEA team believes the current plan from the BOE will increase costs, due to teachers using more sick days, if teachers cannot accumulate days for a payout at the time of their separation from the district.

“They are going to use those days,” Schneweis said, if sick days are changed into a use-it-or-lose-it situation. “We want a contract that recruits and retains people.”

The BOE team doubts increases will occur with an almost 50 percent usage rate in the district currently.

The next negotiating meeting was set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 20.