The government transparency website www.SeeThroughNY.net added the latest available collective bargaining agreements of 81 public school teachers’ unions, the Empire Center, which runs the website, announced Tuesday.
Two of those unions represent Hornell City School District teachers and Cuba-Rushford School District teachers.
The teachers contract on the SeeThroughNY website between the Hornell district and the Hornell Educators’ Association covered July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2009. However, in October 2013, the district and the Hornell Educators’ Association announced an agreement on a new three-year labor contract. The deal, unanimously approved by the Hornell School Board Oct. 7 gives teachers a 2 percent retroactive pay increase for the 2012-13 academic year, a 2.5 percent hike for 2013-14 and a 2.75 percent increase for 2014-15. The contract runs through June 30, 2015.
The district’s teachers had been working on under the terms of the previous three-year contract, which was approved in January 2012 and expired on the last day of June of 2012. Both union and district officials welcomed the settlement.
The contract between Cuba-Rushford and the Cuba-Rushford Teachers’ Association, listed on the SeeThroughNY website covered July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2010. The transparency website also lists a superintendent contract, which took effect July 1, 2009, between Cuba-Rushford and former Superintendent Kevin Shanley, who left in 2012. Carlos Gildemeister is currently superintendent.
Altogether, employee contracts of 97 school superintendents have been added to www.SeeThroughNY.net, Empire Center said Tuesday.
Dave Lombardo, communications manager for Empire Center, said the information the website has varies by school district.
“We go out and request it from every single school district. It’s a very time-consuming process and it’s one that requires constant vigilance,” he said. “There’s a little delay with some of them. They might be slow in getting the information to us.”
Lombardo said school district contract agreement information is good information for voters to have when they go out to vote on proposed district budgets each year. “It’s unfortunate that more schools aren’t posting this on their websites. We just try to take some of this public information and make it accessible to the public,” he said. “Our goal is to promote transparency and that means getting public information where the public can see it. This is really an important way for them to see how their tax dollars are being spent. When they go to vote on a school budget, they can see what they’re voting for.”
The SeeThroughNY?site includes information on other areas, not just school districts. It covers the state, counties and municipalities. “I would say around three times a month, we update the site with new information,”Lombardo said.
© 2014, Hornell Evening Tribune
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