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Mattituck extends non-teaching staff contract for seven years

The Mattituck school board has approved a new seven-year agreement with the district’s non-teaching staff, which carries an annual salary increase of 1.25 percent.

A final copy of the draft has yet to be completed. At the Sept. 17 meeting, the school board approved a memorandum of agreement that outlines the changes.

The previous contract, which ran from June 2011 to June 2015, didn’t include any salary increases for the first year and then granted staff a one percent increase for following three years.

“We’re very happy we stayed underneath the tax cap,” school board president Laura Jens-Smith said. “We’re very happy with the outcome of the contract.”

Additionally, staff members received an additional $250 one-time payment when the agreement was approved.

Superintendent Anne Smith said the goal was to have the agreement done quickly so that the staff wasn’t without a contract for long.

“They started to work on it in anticipation of the previous contract ending,” she said. “Because it was summer, things had to slow down a little because a lot of staff in that unit are not here, but it went very smoothly. Both parties very happy with the result.”

Union president Sam Strickland echoed these sentiments.

“This new contract is ushering in a new era of communication between management and employees in the Mattituck-Cutchogue unit,” he said. “The superintendent and school board are to be commended for the respect they’ve shown during negotiations. The record-breaking time in which this multi-year contract was produced is an example of what can happen when negotiating parties have a mutual regard for each other’s feelings and rights.”

District teachers are still without a contract since it expired in June 2014. According to Ms. Jens-Smith, those negotiations are still ongoing.

“We changed the negotiation team when we changed the board members, so it’ll be our first meeting with the new committee,” she said. “We’re going to have that first and see where we go from there.”

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