Politics on the Hudson

   Forty-seven districts will begin the new school year at impasse with teacher unions, 13 percent lower than last year, according to the state Public Employment Relations Board. About 175 other districts will begin the year without labor contracts, but they are not at impasses and have not yet sought any assistance from PERB.

   As many as 132 impasses have existed at the start of the school year since the advent of the Taylor Law. (The law made striking illegal but gave public employees the right to unionize and bargain collectively, and it set up a mediation and arbitration process.)

   For this year, there are tentative agreements in a small number of the 47 districts but ratification votes have not yet taken place, PERB said in a report this week. Twenty-seven of the impasses involve contracts that expired before the 2007-08 school year. 

   There are 12 impasses in Western New York, six in Central New York, seven in Northern New York and the Capital Region and 22 downstate and on Long Island. For the Lower Hudson Valley, that includes Garrison, Hendrick Hudson, Rye, Rye Neck and Southern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

   “Teacher contract impasses have declined primarily because school districts and employee organizations were prescient enough to enter into multi-year agreements during a period of relatively stable prices, financial markets and budgets,” Richard Curreri of PERB said in a statement. “While it remains to be seen whether this is the calm before the storm, as these long-term contracts expire, and new negotiations take place in the more difficult economic environment we’re now facing, it is fair to expect that the number of disputes will be on the rise.”