CONTACT: Lise Bang-Jensen
(518) 434 3100
Updated school labor contracts for 71 teacher unions and 62 school superintendents were posted today on www.SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government transparency web site.
The newest contacts are part of the most comprehensive public collection of school district labor contracts in New York. Contracts for the 733 school districts and BOCES districts were obtained under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). A number of FOIL requests for updated contracts are pending.
Teacher contracts can determine base salaries; step raises and extra pay for seniority; pay for non-teaching duties such as coaching; length of school year, work schedules and time off; class size, student discipline and teacher evaluation; grievance and disciplinary procedures; scheduling of parent-teacher conferences; and health insurance benefits for employees, retirees and their families.
A regional breakdown of the 133 updated contracts follows (a table listing the updated contracts by region and district is here):
Capital Region (7 contracts)
Central NY (15 contracts)
Finger Lakes (7 contracts)
Long Island (26 contracts)
Mid-Hudson (17 contracts)
Mohawk Valley (12 contracts)
North Country (14 contracts)
Southern Tier (19 contracts)
Western NY (16 contracts)
SeeThroughNY allows the public to examine government expenditures on the Internet. It includes the wages of more than 1.5 million employees of New York State government, public authorities, cities, counties, villages, towns and school districts. Also posted are educator pension data, state legislators’ office expenditures, pork barrel projects, and a benchmarking feature for comparing local government and school district spending. The site launched July 31, 2008.
The Albany-based Empire Center is a non-partisan, independent think tank.
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