AUSTINTOWN, Ohio - After meeting with a federal mediator for eight hours Monday night, negotiators for the Austintown teachers' union agreed to a tentative contract with the school board.
The 315 members of the Austintown Education Association voted last week to allow their negotiating team to issue a 10-day strike notice if talks failed to go anywhere Monday night.
The tentative agreement was announced just after 11 p.m. Friday.
"I believe we've come to a fair settlement for our teachers who make our district 'excellent with disctinction,'" says Barb Tomic, president of the association.
The new agreement includes a raise in the teachers base salary in the Austintown Local School District.
The superintendent for the district says the state released their budget two weeks ago and that helped move negotiations along last night.
"Now that the state budget came out, we see that we are not being reduced and that was one of our fears," says Vincent Colaluca, superintendent. "We thought we'd be reduced from the budget regardless of monies promised to us. We know that's not 100 percent, but we felt we were able to sit down with our teachers and put a fair and equitable off out to them."
Details of the agreement will not be released until the union votes on the contract, which is expected to happen early next week.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 Worldnow and WFMJ. All Rights Reserved. For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms
