| WOOD RIVER EDUCATION | | | CASE NO. 115 |
| ASSOCIATION, An Unincorporated | | | |
| Association, | | | |
| | | ||
| Plaintiff, | | | |
| | | ||
| v. | | | FINDINGS AND ORDER |
| | | ||
| SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 83 OF | | | |
| HALL COUNTY, NEBRASKA, | | | |
| Also Known as WOOD RIVER | | | |
| RURAL HIGH SCHOOL, | | | |
| A Political Subdivision, | | | |
| | | ||
| Defendant. | | |
Appearances:
Theodore L. Kessner of Crosby, Guenzel, Davis, Kessner & Kuester, for plaintiff.
Edwin C. Perry of Perry, Perry, Witthoff & Guthery for defendant.
Heard before Judges DeBacker, Rudolph, and Green.
RUDOLPH, J.
This is an action brought by the Wood River Education Association asking this Court to set the wages for the 1974-75 academic year. The only issues left between the parties are the base salary and extra duty pay, as the Association has abandoned its dispute concerning health insurance premiums.
As to the issue of base pay, the standard of the statute is clear. It is as provided in 48-818 that the pay for teachers shall be "comparable to the prevalent wage rates paid and conditions of employment maintained for the same or similar work or workers exhibiting like or similar skills under similar working conditions."
The problem for the Court is to take the facts of a particular case and apply them to this standard. This is especially true in cases involving teachers. It can be truly said that among primary and secondary teachers all teachers in the State of Nebraska and the United States are somewhat comparable and have somewhat similar working conditions. Most teachers have the same professional qualification, teach students in classes of similar sizes and in Nebraska teach a somewhat similar curriculum. As the Plaintiff's expert, Richard Halama, stated, in some ways all teachers are similar to other teachers.
If this method were to be followed, however, this Court could be replaced by a computer. All that would be needed is to place all the teachers in the State on a salary schedule and find the mid-point, and that would be the salary for all teachers in the State. It is clear that such a result was not contemplated by 48-818. This Act, along with the Teachers Professional Negotiation Act, assumed that private negotiation would basically set the salaries for teachers. It also assumed that some school districts would wish to pay more than average so as to attract the best teaching prospects and others would basically wish to pay as little as possible so as to keep taxes low. The purposes of the law were then to protect the teachers in districts that were teaching in schools where the salaries offered were not comparable to other schools where wages were freely negotiated. This protection was granted in lieu of the basic right of employees to strike if they were not satisfied with the salaries offered.
The problem for the Court is to find the comparable school and the similar working conditions. Since all schools are somewhat comparable and all working conditions for teachers are somewhat similar, we must say that in deciding what schools are to be considered we look at the most comparable school and the most similar working conditions.
We have in our earlier decisions advised that certain elements such as athletic conferences, size and geography tend to isolate the most comparable school and the most similar working conditions. In this case both parties here submitted an array which each claim to present both comparable schools and similar working conditions. The Plaintiff's array is as follows:
Minden ......................... $264,736.60
Sandy Creek .................... 262,650.00
Adams Central .................. 261,563.60
Grand Island N.W. .............. 258,851.49
Wood River ..................... 257,713.60
Ravenna ........................ 256,915.20
Gibbon ......................... 254,732.40
Loup City ...................... 253,854.40
Centura ........................ 253,396.00
St. Paul ....................... 252,547.20
Shelton ........................ 252,186.24
The Defendant's array is as follows:[1]
Ravenna ............................$266,786
Wood River ......................... 266,292
Centura ............................ 265,164
Loup City .......................... 264,347
Gibbon ............................. 263,849
St. Paul ........................... 262,239
Shelton ............................ 260,776
Burwell ............................ 253,999
The Defendant's array includes all of the Low-Platte Schools. The Plaintiff's array includes Grand Island N.W. Rural High School, Minden, Adams Central Rural High School and Sandy Creek, but excludes Burwell, Ravenna.
Even using the formula in Plaintiff's Exhibit 4, the Defendant's salary schedule results in overall compensation of $255,994.[2] This is within $1,149 of the mean average. If the Minden School District is excluded (Minden has 593 students in the 7-12 grades) and if Grand Island N.W. is excluded (Grand Island is a 9-12 school and has over twice the number of Wood River in those grades), the mean average of the Plaintiff's schools would be $255,980, which is less than the last offer by Defendants.
Since neither Minden nor Grand Island N.W. is as comparable as the rest of the schools in Plaintiff's array or Defendant's array, and the remaining schools in both arrays are sufficiently large to consider in setting wages in this manner, the Court will exclude these two schools.
The Court need not do any further computation. In its presentation the Defendant asked this Court to accept its offer as meeting the statutory standards of 48-818. Thus the court finds that the compensation for the 1974 year $7250 base on a 4 x 4 index schedule is "comparable to the prevalent wage rates paid...for same or similar work of workers exhibiting like or similar skills under the same or similar working conditions."
As to the extra-duty compensation schedule, it is clear from the evidence that the Plaintiff failed to prove that $65 per unit was the prevalent in the market. Thus the Court finds that the Defendant's offer of $60 per unit is the appropriate extra-duty pay.
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED:
1. That the compensation for teachers employed by defendant for the 1974-75 school year shall be determined by a salary schedule having a $7250 base and index factors of 4 x 4.
2. That teachers employed by defendant for the 1974-75 school year shall be compensated for extra duty at a rate of $60 per unit.
[1] See also, defendant's computation using plaintiff's formula. Defendant's brief, p. 10.
[2] The difference between plaintiff's calculation and defendant's calculation, using plaintiff's formula, is that plaintiff bases its computation on last year's complement of teachers.
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