NORTHAMPTON — The demand for school district spending in the city could be further compounded if the Northampton Association of School Employees (NASE) union is successful in obtaining additional wage increases its leadership is asking for in a new contract with the city.

According to NASE’s website, the union’s initial proposal submitted on Dec. 20 calls for a 6% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) wage increase for 291 licensed staff, including teachers and administrators, to be applied every year of the proposed three-year contract that would begin July 1. For 155 other union members such as paraeducators, clerical workers, custodians and cafeteria workers, the proposed COLA increase is 8% annually.

In addition, the union is asking for eight weeks for paid family medical leave or parental leave and half-days every Wednesday of the school year for students, with teachers using the remaining part of the day for meetings and other work such as curriculum planning.

In an interview with the Gazette, NASE President Andrea Egitto said the union is asking for two different COLA requests in order to provide additional support for hourly workers, who generally are paid less than salaried staff.

“NASE has been committed for many years now in bringing up the wages of our lowest-paid employees,” Egitto said. She added that the proposed percentages themselves were based on inflation and cost-of-living increases, also acknowledging that “when you go in with a first proposal, there has to be some room to move in.”

Egitto said the request for half-days every Wednesday came from an expressed need for a more consistent schedule to ease the burden on families to find the necessary child care.

“Right now in our contract, we have a full week of early release days in October for parent-teacher conferences,” Egitto said. “Something that we have heard for many years is that it’s really a hardship to have a full week of early release days. So as a way to alleviate that difficulty for families, we thought instead of doing a full week, we could have those conferences scattered across five Wednesday half-days.”

Following a negotiating session in April, the School Committee submitted a counter proposal consisting of two possible scenarios.

One proposal includes concessions to many smaller demands advocated for by NASE, such as adding 30 minutes to the paid workday, among others. The proposal calls for a 2% COLA increase for the first two years for hourly employees, and 1.5% for salaried. In the third year, the hourly would go up to 2.5% and salary would go to 2%.

The other counter proposal would offer a higher COLA but without the smaller concessions. In this scenario, the COLA would be set at 3% for hourly employees 2.75% for those on salary. In the final year, both hourly and salary would receive 2.5% raises.

In response to the demand for the Wednesday half-days, the School Committee stated that further discussion on its implications is needed before it could agree to such a measure.

“This decision would require a public process,” the committee wrote in its initial response to the NASE proposal in January. “The committee is curious if there is any research about the effects of weekly (half) days on learning outcomes, especially at different levels.”

Emily Serafy-Cox, who leads the negotiating team for the School Committee, had no comment on the negotiations other than to say “we’re making good progress.”

The union voted on Thursday to go work-to-rule for Northampton Public School district employees, ceasing any voluntary work not strictly required by the terms of their contract. The action went into effect on Monday, with standouts held in front of the district’s six schools in support of school staff as they negotiate for a new contract with the school committee.

The two sides will meet again on Wednesday at JFK Middle School to continue negotiations, in hopes of striking a deal.

“There has been movement from [the School Committee’s] initial financial counter, and we’re hoping to come to a middle ground,” Egitto said. “If we can come to a tentative agreement, then we could stop the work-to-rule action and go back to our end-of-year fun activities with our students.”

Though negotiations for a new contract have not halted completely, difficulties in hammering out a new deal have been exacerbated by the city’s approach to school spending, both sides agreed. Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, who also heads the School Committee, has stated her intention to increase school spending by 5.8% in the upcoming fiscal budget, which according to Superintendent Portia Bonner would be enough to prevent layoffs but still see reductions in services and elimination of some positions via attrition. Supporters of higher school spending, including NASE, have called for more than twice that amount.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.