Good evening Board Chair Causey, Vice Chair Henn, Superintendent Williams, and members of the Board.

Early last spring this school board submitted an operating budget to the County Executive that included longevity step increases as well as a 2% Cost of Living (COLA) increase for all employees in the five BCPS bargaining units.

In that same time frame, the County Executive appeared before this Board informing us of an $81 million deficit. Obviously county funds spent on salary increases in any form would be precarious.

The County Executive approved step increases for all associations but delayed the COLA for tree of the five until June 2020. Thus 51 CASE employees will actually lose money this year as they are at the last step on our salary scale and won’t receive a COLA to keep up with inflation.

Fortunately, Senate Bill 1030 provided $9.8 million dollars to the county to fund teacher salaries. This money could only be used for teacher salaries. Consequently, teachers received a 2% COLA as of July 1, 2019, and the County Executive did find county funds for another association’s COLA which also began on July 1, 2019.

This is important! Please understand. CASE is by no means suggesting that all employees shouldn’t get the salaries for which they negotiated. And we certainly understand and applaud the state funding that is directed at teachers. But while we have absolutely no animosity towards the association whose COLA was funded by local funds, we feel it is extremely disingenuous of the County Executive to single out 1 of the 4 remaining bargaining units for local funding while lamenting an inherited deficit. 

CASE thanks this Board, its leadership and Dr. Williams for being receptive to potentially funding the other 3 association’s COLAs by transferring funds within the budget. While it wasn’t possible to do, your openness and support is heartening.

With all of this said, the CASE Board of Directors has voted to not sign our Master Agreement and will work without an agreement as the only item negotiated last year was salary. This is done as a sign of disappointment and dissatisfaction of our negotiated agreement not being funded in an arbitrary and capricious manner. This will not impact the hard work and extra effort given by these professionals every day.

Negotiations for the 2020-2021 CASE Master Agreement begin next week. CASE has alerted the Board and the Superintendent that they should be prepared for us to make up for the loss of earnings and retirement benefits incurred this year.

Thank you.

Tom DeHart,
Executive Director, CASE