ELLENVILLE – As August settles in, the word from both sides of the upcoming Ellenville Central School District teachers' contract negotiations is that there no plans for any meetings before the fall.

"I hope we can meet before the summer's out," says Jim Pidel of the Teacher's Union. "But substantive meetings will not take place before school starts."

Lisa Wiles, Superintendent of Schools, says much the same thing: "Negotiations will not begin until the fall."

When asked about what the teachers might be thinking of in terms of this next contract, Pidell says, "We don't want anything more than the going rate."

"There are no beefs, no animosities with the district, nor agendas or wishlists," he continues. "This is business as usual, when it comes to contracts."

Of course, for the taxpayers of the school district, this is also very important business. The school budget is by far the largest expense in the district's area and even in a year of financial austerity for the state, that budget grew a little to $44,468,853 (2009-10). The school district's teachers are the largest expense in that budget, as might be expected, and according to Jim Pidel in an interview in 2008, "Ellenville's teachers are the eighth best paid in Ulster County, when we're looking at the main body of our teachers. We are third in the county when it comes to our best paid teachers. Those are the teachers who've been in Ellenville their entire careers and have been on the job for 25 years." However, it should be noted that, when compared with district residents' property tax values, Ellenville's teachers are the highest paid in the county, and have some of the highest paid individual teachers in the county as well.

Taxpayers, who haven't had a lot of economic joy come their way this past year, will be watching these negotiations at the school district with concern. The Village of Ellenville, as demonstrated by SUNY New Paltz's Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO) report of 2008, is the highest taxed locality in Ulster County, and anything that raises taxes further can only make recovery by the village that much more difficult.