NYS school contracts available online

New labor contracts for 52 teachers’ unions and 104 school superintendents, ratified since July 1, 2013, are now available on www.SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government transparency website, which is home to the most complete public collection of collectively-bargained school district contracts in the state.Since 2008, the Empire Center has used the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) to obtain contracts for the state’s more than 700 school and BOCES districts. There are outstanding FOIL requests as part of the effort to maintain the most current database.Regional summaries of the newly posted data are available in a downloadable PDF available on the website.“The Empire Center is committed to maintaining the most comprehensive listing of collectively bargained school contracts in the state on SeeThroughNY, as another means to help New Yorkers more fully understand how their property tax dollars are spent,” said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center.The teacher and superintendent contracts can determine base salaries; step raises and extra pay for seniority; pay for non-teaching duties such as coaching; length of school year and vacation time; class size and teacher evaluation; grievance and disciplinary procedures; and health insurance benefits for employees, retirees and families.SeeThroughNY allows the public to examine government expenditures on the Internet. It includes the wages of New York State government, public authorities, cities, counties, villages, towns and school districts employees. Also posted are pension data, state legislators’ office expenditures, pork barrel projects, a benchmarking feature for comparing local government and school district spending, and a budget app, which allows taxpayers to search current and historic numbers on state spending and revenues. The site launched July 31, 2008.Click here for the information and data on SeeThroughNY.com.