The Cooperstown Central School Faculty Association and the Board of Education have taken one step closer to reaching an agreement on salary contracts for this year.

Both sides have been awaiting the arrival of a representative from the Public Employee Relations Board to help them find some middle ground after the CCS Faculty Association declared an impasse. Negotiations on this contract have lasted over two years.

CCS Superintendent Mary Jo McPhail said PERB representative, Anthony Zumbalo, is scheduled to meet with the board and the faculty association on Dec. 21.

McPhail said she is hopeful that this meeting will help both sides come to an agreement.

"I am pleased that we were able to get a date scheduled for December," McPhail said.

McPhail said she had been worried that it would take longer to find an available PERB representative because there are only two in the entire state.

Faculty Association President Marjorie Schleining said she looks forward to the meeting with Zumbalo as well, but she could not say whether an agreement will be reached as a result of the negotiations.

Schleining said the Faculty Association has met with the board since the impasse was declared, but no headway has been made.

Schleining said Zumbalo will address both the faculty association and the board as one large group, laying out the "rules" for the mediated negotiations. After that, she said, both sides go to separate rooms and the negotiations start.

Zumbalo will then meet with each side separately, listening to their individual needs and then hopefully proposing a solution that will satisfy everyone, said Schleining. However, she said, the solution that Zumbalo will make will be non-binding.

Schleining said that in the past the CCS service unit went through a similar mediation process, only to turn down the offer put forth by the mediator.

"The outcome is very hard to predict," Schleining said.

Presently, the CCS faculty is working without a contract in place, providing teachers with no salary increase, Schleining said. She said faculty members are actually taking home less money than they did last year.

Last month, the faculty association turned down a district offer that would have raised their salaries by 12.25 percent over the next three years.

The previous contract was for three years. On the third year, a roll-over was negotiated, McPhail said. The faculty association received a 15.4 percent raise over that four year period.

Both the school board and the faculty association sent letters to area newspapers last month as well, describing their positions on the matter.

"We must be responsive to ever-increasing costs such as health insurance," the board said in its letter. "Yet we did not ask the teachers to increase the percentage of premium pay-in for their health insurance."

The letter went on to state the other specifics of what each side of the negotiations wanted.

School Board President Keith Additon said the letter was sent to the newspapers for the sole purpose of informing the public of the facts of the matter.

Schleining said the faculty association is upset with the school board for writing the letter because the association had hoped that an agreement could have been made before the specifics were made public.

In response, the faculty association said, "We have made every effort to be fair as we have in been in previous negotiations. We, in fact, agreed to a "roll over" at 3.2 percent to give the negotiations teams sufficient time to come to an agreement."

The letter went on to say, "Based on the statistical data in our possession, our teachers are asking for a raise that is less than schools that are within our geographical location."

Schleining said the faculty association did not reject the district's offer just on the basis of money. She said the association felt some of the wording in the contract could have been changed as well to assure the terms are read more clearly.

"The board and I appreciate that the issue is not affecting the day-to-day operations here at school," McPhail said.

"We're just entering another phase of negotiations," Additon said.

Schleining, a language teacher at the middle/high school, said the faculty association is disappointed that negotiations have not yet been settled, but she said it still has hope that an agreement can be made. Until then, she said, the "unified" association will maintain its professionalism and perform its duties as teachers of the school.