Bellefonte School District Officials, Union Discuss Negotiations and Next Steps as Potential Strike Looms

Bellefonte Area School District officials on Tuesday spoke about contract negotiations to date and the road ahead, a day after unionized teachers and staff authorized a potential strike for mid-October.

School board president Jon Guizar and district solicitor Carl Beard offered an accounting of the bargaining sessions to date and a defense of the process as routine for contract negotiations.

The Bellefonte Area Education Association voted Monday in favor of authorizing a strike for Oct. 12 if negotiations continue to fail, with 94% of union members participating and 99% of those voting yes on the work stoppage. Union members, who entered the 2026-27 school year without a contract, say talks began more than a year ago but that they have been stalled by district negotiators.

Speaking during public comment at Tuesday’s school board meeting, high school math teacher Jonathan Virgilio said “district representatives have repeatedly failed to communicate for weeks and months at a time” and that when they have met they often present “take-it-or-leave” proposals through their attorney or a state mediator.

“We cannot accept them as written because they have provisions we have repeatedly stated are poison pills,” Virgilio said. “When we reject them, the district goes back to their official table position. It has been very clear to the district that we are frustrated with the lack of progress.”

Guizar contended that is among the “half-truths” that have been presented publicly in recent days, saying that both parties meet, then caucus and give their proposals to their representatives.

“It’s kind of true that we go through an attorney or our representative. We also have just face-to-face conversations, but they do the same thing,” Guizar said. “So to try to make that out to be a bad thing, it’s just part of the normal process. And it’s very disheartening when [they] come in here and try to give one side of the story to make us look like we’re doing something wrong. We’re just following the process. We’re trying to negotiate in good faith, and I feel like you’re being given half-truths.”

Union members are seeking a new salary schedule that addresses the compensation gap that puts Bellefonte’s professional staff at the bottom of the pack among Centre County school districts.

The growth in residential and commercial development has expanded the district’s tax base “significantly,” Virgilio said, providing new revenue that could be used to keep wages competitive.

“We want to stress: we have not asked for comparable compensation to State College. In fact, we have repeatedly stated we understand we cannot reach comparable compensation with them,” Virgilio sad. “We are asking for a fair contract that will keep us competitive with the county. We know we may not make make up for all lost ground in one contract because so much ground has been lost already. But we need to make serious progress towards competitiveness. If we want to become more competitive in the future, that is what our union is fighting for to achieve, because that is what we and Bellefonte families deserve.”

Guizar previously said the district wants to reach an agreement that provides for staff while being mindful of the budget and keeping tax increases “at a level the community can afford.”

Beard said that in August 2025 the parties began an “early bird facilitation process” involving a state-appointed mediator in a “hybrid of traditional negotiations and timed mediation,” with the understanding that if it didn’t work out they would move to traditional negotiations.

The process resulted in a framework for a five-year agreement for salary schedules, which the union rejected by a three-to-one margin, Beard said.

“The facts are not in dispute,” said Connor Lewis, region advocacy coordinator for the Pennsylvania State Education Association. “The district has acknowledged that we first began negotiations on a new agreement in August of 2025. That the format of the negotiations process changed does not change that Bellefonte staff have spent a year attempting to reach a fair agreement with the district.”

Discussions continued over the ensuing months, Beard said, with negotiation sessions in May, August and September that failed to produce a contract agreement.

He and Guizar noted that the current salary schedules were put forward by the union, not the district, in contracts for the last 15 years.

“The district usually agrees on a percentage salary increase for the year or for the course of the contract, and then the association develops the schedule on how that money is distributed,” Guizar said. “We all agree that there’s a gap in the schedule. We’re trying to fix it, and you heard this evening comment that we’re insisting on being involved in the schedule now. That’s absolutely 100% correct. We are insisting on being involved in the schedule because for the last 15 years we were completely removed from it, and it’s created a problem. And we’re trying to fix it.”

Moving forward, Beard recommended entering a fact-finding period as a potential way to avoid a strike. Under Pennsylvania’s school code, the parties can ask the state to appoint a fact finder who hears the offers from both sides then makes a non-binding recommendation in a process that takes no more than 40 days. If either side rejects it, negotiations would resume. The fact finder’s report also would be made public.

“I think that’s important because there is no disruption to the community,” Beard said. “There is no disruption to the educational process. There is no disruption whatsoever… To go the strike route, you need to inconvenience everybody for 12 or 15 days to get to a process that already exists that creates no disruption between the parties.”

Guizar called it a “more reasonable path for both parties, but Lewis, the PSEA representative, was skeptical.

“Given the district’s lack of movement and the distance between the parties, fact-finding would simply be a misuse of time and taxpayer money and would bring the parties no closer to an agreement,” Lewis sad. “We believe that a solution is through district leaders negotiating directly with their staff, and we encourage them to prioritize direct discussion and give-and-take at the bargaining table. We have offered them numerous negotiations dates and encourage them to respond and make themselves available to bargain a fair agreement.”

The next negotiations are scheduled for Sept. 22, and beyond that the union has proposed five more bargaining dates. Guizar and Superintendent Roy Rakszawski, wrote in a message to families on Wednesday that district officials “stand ready to dedicate the time necessary to reach a resolution,” adding that the board will continue negotiating “in good faith until a fair and equitable agreement is reached.”

“I just hope that we can come to an agreement on how to move forward [and] explore other options that will not disrupt students, teachers or families,” Guizar said on Tuesday.