At the meeting this week, Michelle Greenough, Fredonia Teachers Association President, spoke on behalf of the FTA regarding its ongoing negotiations with the district. Many teachers sat in the audience and wore matching t-shirts in support of Greenough.

“The FTA is represented here tonight because our contract expired at the end of June,” Greenough said. “We acknowledge the hard work that has been done by the teams on both sides to this point. Because of that hard work and those difficult conversations, the successor agreement is nearly ready for ratification.

“I believe that many of the conversations during negotiations were illuminating for us and the district. After our negotiations come to a close, we look forward to continued work problem solving together.”

OBSERVER Photos by Braden Carmen Fredonia Teachers Association President Michelle Greenough spoke on behalf of the Fredonia Teachers Association regarding their ongoing negotiations with the district at a recent Board of Education meeting.

Zilliox said when the negotiations became focused on a group of four that included Zilliox and Business Administrator John Forbes representing the district and Greenough and Amy Lauer representing the FTA, the conversations remained positive as the two sides worked to come to an agreement.

“We always thought that end goal is to reach an agreement that we can both feel good about and that would set the stage for a positive remainder of this school year, as well as the terms of the agreement,” said Zilliox.

Zilliox and Greenough are both hopeful that a three-year agreement will be ratified at the next meeting.

“In my mind, we have a verbal agreement — a conceptual agreement — on the table,” said Zilliox. “We are looking at some of the language … that would not change the spirit or the details of what we agreed to at this point. That takes a little bit of extra time.”

Zilliox continued, “We appreciate being at the end of this process. The thought is that the FTA would ratify sometime prior to our next meeting (Sept. 27) and the board would be prepared for the same at that meeting.”