Copy of a message from the West Orange Education Association (WOEA) to its members, titled
"WOEA - Response to Message from the District", published on the union's mailing-list
service (sendy.njeasites.net). The message carries no date of its own; it refers to "the email
that was sent by the Board of Education today", which is the Board's email of October 14, 2026,
so it is dated October 14 here. It reached the owner of this site on October 15 as a link
shared in a parents' chat, not through the union's mailing list. It reshares a message to
members of October 5, 2026. The text is reproduced as published. Image captions, the mailing-list
footer links, and the Job Action Team's email address are omitted; the rally is the
Saturday after publication, October 17, 2026. The message's links were followed on October 15:
"Visit Our Website" and "westorangeea.org" go to https://westorangeea.org/ and the "(link here)"
after the 80% figure goes to a New Jersey Association of School Business Officials document,
https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.njasbo.com/resource/resmgr/2025-2026/odds_&_ends/impact_of_chapter_44_final.pdf

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THE BOARD OF EDUCATION BLAMES YOU FOR THEIR FINANCIAL PROBLEMS

Visit Our Website

Follow the WOEA on Instagram @woea_westorange

RALLY IN SUPPORT OF OUR EDUCATORS
THIS SATURDAY
11am-1pm
CORNER OF NORTHFIELD AVENUE & PLEASANT VALLEY WAY
BRING SIGNS!
"No Contract, Still Working"
"West Orange Educators Deserve Respect"
See the photo below to see where we will picketing and where you can park

Click on the map or this link to see the map larger

The WOEA has seen the email that was sent by the Board of Education today, and we categorically deny and refuse to accept the insulting accusation that WE are to blame for the financial failings of the Board of Education. Keep an eye out for more information in the near future.

DISTRICT CLAIM: West Orange's largest single line item is salary and benefits.
FACT: EVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT IN THE STATE spends the majority of their budget on salary and benefits!

DISTRICT CLAIM: West Orange spends 70% of its budget on salary and benefits.
FACT: On average, New Jersey districts spend over 80% of their budgets on salary and benefits (link here)

The average salary increase across the state is roughly 3.5%.
We are only asking what is FAIR.

Our Job Action Committee met on October 8 and will be meeting again soon. Please keep your eye out for information about that.

If you are interested in helping to plan our job actions or have suggestions for the team, please email the Job Action Team at [address omitted].

IN THE MEANTIME, we are resharing the message that was originally sent on October 5.
FEEL FREE to SHARE THIS INFORMATION on social media.

Dear WOEA members:

This afternoon (Monday, October 5) the WOEA and the Board of Education held our second Fact Finding meeting. We walked in with the optimistic and, we believed, realistic goal of working out a deal between the WOEA and BOE that was fair and reasonable to both parties. During the course of the meeting, the Board of Education returned with a REGRESSIVE offer. Essentially, they are offering substantially LESS than what they had offered in the past. Regressive bargaining is not only the ultimate show of faithless bargaining, but also an unfair practice.

They invited their auditor to the meeting in order to present to the Fact Finder a grimmer financial picture than the district believed they were in. We were provided no document to reinforce this position, but were essentially told, take less because we have less.

This is, in a word, insulting.

Their Monday offer had three main points:

They are offering significantly less money than they budgeted, voted on, and approved at their budget discussions and meetings in the Spring.
They want to eliminate longevity for all new hires.
They want to freeze longevity, permanently. This would mean that all current staff would stay exactly where they are at present in regards to longevity. If you are currently in the first longevity tier, that is where you would stay. If you do not get longevity now, you will never receive it.

Their offer, were we to accept it, when combined with rising healthcare costs and inflation, would result in a loss of take home pay for our current members. Their offer to eliminate longevity for new hires would kneecap our District's ability to attract quality hires in the future. And their offer to freeze longevity is nothing short of spitting in the eyes of the staff who have dedicated years to our schools. Taken together, their offer threatens immediate and irreparable harm to our schools and staff.

We said NO.

Our goal in negotiations is to get the best deal possible for our association. We remain dedicated and steadfast in those goals. We can only agree to a contract that includes a fair salary increase that does not come at the expense of our most veteran staff.

The District is claiming to be in financial straits, but given their history of misleading and disingenuous comments, how are we supposed to take them at their word? Any financial worries that they are facing are due to their own financial mismanagement, or that of the former Business Administrator, yet WE are being asked to fix it. They are asking YOU to BAIL THEM OUT!

To that, we say NO.

Our Negotiations Timeline

From the beginning, the WOEA approached the BOE with an open willingness to negotiate in good faith. And the Board Negotiation's Team showed us their true colors on our first meeting in March of 2025. At that meeting the Board indicated that they would not exchange proposals at the table, as is the normal practice at an initial meeting. Instead they asked the WOEA to hand over our proposals for them to review and respond to. To be sure there was no misunderstanding their intentions, we asked, "You want us to hand over our proposals to you today without an exchange?" And their response was, "Would you?" We walked out of that meeting, with our proposals still in our hands and the knowledge that this was a Board looking to deceive to gain advantage.

As negotiations progressed from the Spring into the Summer of 2025, it also became apparent that Board members do not have a full grasp of the day to day lives of our students and staff inside of schools. What's more is that our efforts to explain our schools' schedules and our related proposals were met with indifference. Scrolling through their phones told us that our words were falling on deaf ears.

By the Fall of 2025, we had switched to small group sessions. The WOEA's small team met with the Board's attorney and Superintendent Moore. We appreciate Mr. Moore taking his time to assist in this process. His insight into how our schools actually worked provided the clarity that we needed to move forward with our negotiations and actually get some resolution to some of our proposals. But for the vast majority of those weekly meetings from September through the end of October 2025, Board members were NOT present. Mr. Stevenson did not attend a single negotiations meeting that Fall and Dr. Ivker attended two. The message from March was reaffirmed, their lack of interest in understanding details engaging in meaningful negotiations.

By November of 2025, we met with the Board members to discuss finances. The Board offer was one that we would have been willing to negotiate, except it came with an ultimatum: tiering our members on longevity. This was the first time in the entire negotiations process that the issue of tiering longevity came up. Longevity was not part of the Board's initial proposals. They introduced a brand new proposal in the 11th hour! Mr. Stevenson's words as we left that meeting were "best and final offer," like a real estate deal instead of the two sided negotiations process that it should be. The WOEA made a counter offer by email within the week, which included cost saving measures to the district in all five years of the contract. The Board rejected our offer. We moved to mutually declared impasse in January of 2026.

We met with a mediator in March of 2026. Neither side moved in their positions. It is important to note that the Board made no mention of the plan to outsource paras at this meeting. Last the WOEA had heard in an email from March 17, the district was only considering the "possibility" of outsourcing. We now know from the lack of forthright communication with the public, including plans to open outsourcing bids in April in violation of the law, that their decision had already been made, without any attempts to solicit input from parent and staff stakeholders.

We moved to Fact Finding, the next step in the negotiations process. We met with the Fact Finder on August 3, 2026. The mediator opened the meeting with the statement that of the hundreds of Fact Finding sessions that he has mediated, over 90% of them ended in a settlement before a hearing. Despite the desire of the mediator and the WOEA to meet again before the start of school, the Board's team was unwilling to provide a date earlier than October 5.

And that brings us to now. The mediator informed us today that the Board was offering a REGRESSIVE proposal, with a salary offer that was "substantially less" than their previous offer in August. Today's Board offer also sought to gut longevity for current and future members as well. The mediator was unable to provide any evidence or any specific salary offers from the Board. We responded that our offer still stands. We cannot engage in negotiations with a Board who is trying to drastically change the rules of the game in the last minute of play.

You can see that at every single step along the way we negotiated in good faith to move things forward. Meanwhile, none of their actions since the start of this process have garnered trust. Who among us can truly say, "We trust the Board?" On the contrary all they have done is destroy morale and sow discontent. We are overworked, underappreciated, and they do not seem to care. Think to yourself, when was the last time you felt respected and appreciated as the professional that you are?

The next step is a Fact Finding Hearing, which is scheduled for January 7.

In the meantime we fight.

So far we have been reserved in our job actions out of respect for the process. We have continued to do many things out of professional courtesy. However, much of the extra work we do is neither a contractual or legal requirement. As such, we are not obligated to perform such extra tasks. How can we be expected to offer professional courtesy when the Board's actions today show nothing but disrespect.

Our professional courtesy ends now.

179 Eagle Rock Avenue West Orange, NJ 07052 | 973-669-5400
westorangeea.org