Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Act93 Agreement topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Keystone Central trustees, Act 93 reps agree in discussion to 90% tuition reimbursement and $800 dues cap; retirement benefits remain unresolved
Summary
At a June 16 special meeting, the Keystone Central School District board listened to Act 93 administrative representatives and, in public deliberation, recorded meeting-level opinions supporting a 90% tuition-reimbursement rate and an $800 annual cap on professional dues. The board did not finalize the plan and deferred formal votes and the most contentious retirement-health benefit decisions to a future public meeting.
At a June 16 special meeting, the Keystone Central School District board met with Act 93 administrative representatives to review a proposed 2026–2029 Act 93 agreement and to hear concerns that earlier redlined edits were omitted from the district's final draft.
After a closed meet-and-discuss executive session with Act 93 representatives, trustees returned to public session and discussed specific contract language. The board agreed in public deliberation to relocate salary-range figures from Exhibit A into Article 3 (district range $77,000–$150,000; building range $71,000–$140,000; other ranges $30,000–$126,000) and to correct a bereavement typo by adding "brother" to the list of immediate family members.
On professional-development tuition, trustees debated raising reimbursement from the current 80% to options of 90% or 100%. Following a roundtable of preferences, the chair recorded a meeting-level opinion favoring 90% tuition reimbursement for qualifying professional development; she emphasized this was an advisory outcome of the discussion and not a formal vote, and she said the item will appear on the Thursday public meeting agenda for official action.
Trustees also debated professional organization dues and whether to keep a $650 cap, raise it to $800, or set separate state/national limits. The board recorded an opinion to replace the $650-per-year figure with a single $800-per-employee cap (allowing employees to allocate that sum across approved memberships). The change was described as a consensus-level edit from the discussion, not an adopted contract change.
The meeting's longest, most contentious discussion concerned a legacy post-retirement health-care provision that provides up to eight years of district-paid coverage for eligible Act 93 employees. Several trustees argued the eight-year benefit is unaffordable for taxpayers and should be eliminated; others said cutting benefits immediately would unfairly "pull the rug out" from long-serving employees and urged a phased transition, targeted memoranda of understanding for imminent retirees, or other soft-landing measures. Trustee Rich Wyckoff moved that discussions continue under the current 2021–2026 agreement until a new agreement is ready to present; the board did not vote on the motion at the special meeting and scheduled further consideration at the next public meeting.
Act 93 representatives had urged another meet-and-discuss to ensure the final written agreement reflected the substance of prior negotiations. Nick Varelli, speaking for the Act 93 group, said the draft delivered to the group on May 5 and the subsequently rewritten draft raised concerns that "items discussed during the meet-and-discuss sessions and areas of apparent consensus were still not accurately reflected in the written proposal." Board members acknowledged the concerns and said they would obtain legal guidance and circulate corrected drafts to trustees and Act 93 representatives before the next public vote.
The board recessed for an executive session from 6:08 to 7:25 p.m. and adjourned the special meeting at 8:26 p.m. The board chair said corrected language and any legal guidance would be circulated to trustees ahead of the Thursday public meeting, where formal votes on the Act 93 agreement and any contract language will occur.
