Educational news from outside the district

Two news items from Pennsylvania:

• The Hatboro-Horsham School District in Pennsylvania is in the midst of teacher contract negotiations. The district is in suburban Philadelphia. A Philadelphia Courier-Times article highlights some of the concerns on both sides. The district is attempting to change to a more merit pay type of compensation. The union would like to keep things the way they are with 5+% effective increases each year. Take some time to looks at the proposals and see how far apart the sides are. There is a Q&A discussion of the plans, probably posted by the district. It will be interesting to see what the final contract looks like.
• In a Pittsburgh Post gazette article: "Legislature may consider 1% sales tax plan" the latest plan to allow counties to impose a 1% sales tax is discussed. The plan has not evolved much in the past few months, and there does not seem to be provisions for helping ease the school tax portion of property taxes:

  "if a county does increase its sales tax by 1 percent, half the new revenue would go into county coffers, and the county would have to use some of it to reduce property taxes.

  Another 40 percent of the additional sales tax revenue would be split among the municipalities in the county; and the rest would go for "collaborative services," such as joint police operations, equipment purchasing and regional booking centers."

It would be interesting to see how counties would adopt and deal with a 1% property tax.