A travel expenditure the Penn Hills school board approved on March 8 has been the subject of criticism from teachers, who have been working without a contract since Aug. 31, as well as community members.

The board approved spending about $14,000 to send six members and the district's solicitor to the National School Board Conference in Chicago in April.

Former director Erin Vecchio was particularly critical of the board at last week's meeting.

"Six of you do not need to go to Chicago," she said to cheers and applause from the audience, which included many teachers. "This is a vacation. That 14 grand should be going to books or something to educate our children."

Penn Hills Education Association president Ryan Osorio said: "For a district that complains about lack of funds, they do not seem to be using money in appropriate or financially conscious ways."

In an interview following the meeting, director Bob Hudak said that he and his board colleagues are permitted to attend conferences and other educational opportunities that help them perform their duties more effectively. In addition to the national conference, board members attend local and regional trainings, he said.

He said the conference in dispute will provide a chance to interact with school board members from across the nation and to access "a vast wealth of knowledge and new ideas.

"Board members have different interests and specialties. We go to [conference] sessions about the areas that we have responsibility for and bring that knowledge back to the district."

Business manager Richard Liberto said about $20,000 is budgeted for board travel each year. No board members attended the national conference in 2009 because negotiations for the teachers' contract were starting, Mr. Hudak said.

"The board had the teachers' contract on their mind," he said.

When six board members decided in December to attend the conference, it appeared that contract talks were moving toward settlement, he said.

The district and union representing Penn Hills' 412 teachers have been negotiating since January 2009. The district's other unresolved contract, with its support professionals, expired in June.

Negotiations for the teachers' contract fell apart in early February, and the union staged a four-day strike. Two subsequent negotiation sessions did not produce a contract, leading the parties to jointly request fact-finding from the state Labor Relations Board.

The labor board was expected this week to appoint a neutral third party to study the labor dispute and make nonbinding recommendations within 40 days.

The parties would then have 10 days to accept or reject the recommendations. If either rejects them, the report is published and the parties would have 10 more days to reconsider.

By law, the teachers' union is permitted to strike a second time in a school year as long as students receive 180 days of instruction by June 30. The district recently announced the makeup days for the ones that were lost to heavy snow in February. The last day of the school year is set for June 16.

The district's last offer to the teachers was a five-year contract with raises of about 3 percent for four of the five years. The offer includes an increase in the teachers' contribution to health care - from 1.2 percent of salary to 7 percent of the actual premium by the final year of the contract.

Butch Santicola of the Pennsylvania State Education Association said union negotiators proposed 6 percent annual salary increases and a reduction in health care contribution at one point during the negotiations, but have modified that position.

The union is seeking health care coverage of domestic partners and the extension of the health care benefit from the time of retirement until the individual is eligible for Medicare.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education reports that the average teacher salary in Penn Hills during the 2007-08 school year was $48,817. The average for the state was $56,091 and the average for Allegheny County was $52,035.

An employee contribution of 1.2 percent of a $48,000 salary toward family health care coverage at the current rate is $576 per year. Seven percent of the current family health premium would be about $1,008 per year.

Another expenditure that has irked the teachers' union is the district's use of labor negotiator Bruce Campbell.

On a video posted on the PHEA's website and Facebook page, Mr. Osorio blasts the district for spending $31,000 on Mr. Campbell's services since the start of 2010. Mr. Osorio says in the video that Mr. Campbell has a "proven track record of delayed and extended negotiations," citing labor disputes in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District and the Crestwood district in northeast Pennsylvania.

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.