RIDGWAY — After a protracted labor dispute and two years of working without a contract, the new school year could bring a new lease for Ridgway Area school teachers with the district’s Board of Directors approving a new contract by the narrowest of margins Tuesday.

In a 5 to 4 vote, Ridgway Area School District Board of directors approved a new collective bargaining agreement with teachers, complete with a two percent annual pay increase and, board members said, nearly unparalleled benefits. 

Boardmembers opposed to the proposal said the inclusion of pay hikes and flat health care contributions threaten to put the district into the red, or lead to higher property taxes for residents.  

While maintaining Ridgway’s teachers deserve to be paid more, boardmembers said the district simply cannot afford it.

“We’ll be in the hole in five years,” said board member Johna Holtz. “We just don’t have it in our budget.” 

The contract approved by the board Tuesday now awaits ratification by the Ridgway Area Teachers Union (RATA).

RATA spokesperson Rich Skellen said he expects the teachers to approve the contract in a meeting to be held at the Ridgway Area High School on Thursday. If approved the contract would carry teachers through 2017. 

“This proposal has been a long time coming and both sides have negotiated and worked real hard to get where we’re at with the proposal currently,” Skellen said. 

The possible resolution comes after a more than year-long contract dispute in which both sides, the publicly elected school board and teacher-elected union, staunchly defended their respective positions and constituent interests. 

Teachers working without a contract in place continued to be paid under the terms of a previous agreement while fighting for pay increases they say were promised to them as well as free health care coverage. 

A state arbitrator brought in to mediate ultimately provided suggested compromises shot down by the board which felt they unfairly favored the teachers. 

Those claims continued Tuesday with boardmembers viewing the most recent proposal as skewed toward labor interests. Skellen disagrees, saying teachers have made major concessions including taking on monthly health care payments where before there were none. 

But board members like Dave Parsons say the roughly $55 per month rate under the contract proposal is out-of-sync with average contributions of between $300 to $400 paid by employees of area industry. 

Parsons was among those advocating teachers share a percentage of the annual increase in health care costs rather than adopt a flat rate, saying an industry standard has employees contributing between 20 to 25 percent. 

“No matter what our health care costs increased they (the teachers) are guaranteed for the next four years what they pay,” Parsons said.

While board members like Kathy Lampman lauded the contract as a “fair compromise,” adding she believes “both sides have come a long way and I think it would be beneficial to pass it,” Parsons said a recent threatened strike by the teachers union prompted members of a previously dissenting board majority to reconsider their positions. 

Skellen said though talk of striking had occurred, the union had made no formal vote to take such action. 

He expects the teachers will formally approve the proposal in a meeting Thursday— assuming no drastic alterations have been made by the board in recent closed-door sessions on the matter.   

“The general consensus is that we’re ready to … we’re pretty happy with what it (the contract) was going into the executive session, and I feel good that this will all be taken care of and that we will be starting the school year with a contract in place,” Skellen said. 

Newly contracted faculty will join new leadership at the district this year with the board on Tuesday naming Brookville Area High School principal Robert Rocco as new RASD superintendent.  

Rocco was chosen from a field of 17 candidates to replace for former superintendent Dr. Michael O’Brien who left earlier this year. 

The board on Tuesday said Rocco was recommended through a Pennsylvania School Board Association search and chosen based on his credentials and charisma. 

Holtz said the teachers contract dispute “we realized morale and everything he seemed like he had a sense of humor, and we thought we needed that right now.” 

Rocco’s appointment carries a $110,000 annual salary, the details of which will be approved at a later date. 

St. Marys Area School District’s recent decision to appoint an out-of-district candidate as superintendent over in-house candidates, or those already employed by the district, spurred a public backlash. 

Ridgway’s school board said the same concerns weighed on their minds as they considered the options, but after careful deliberation Rocco emerged as the obvious choice. 

Boardmembers refused to name in-house candidates, or current RASD employees who applied for the superintendency position or those who were in the running.

Board member Cindy Allegretto said, “It was a very close, touch choice.”