By DAN SOKIL
Staff Writer

The following questions and answers are taken from an interview conducted with Lukridge. Video of the interview can be seen at www.TheReporterOnline.com.

Question: What do you see as the main sticking point at this time?

Lukridge: "There are two main sticking points, salaries and benefits. We are far apart on salaries; what we're asking for is what the average teacher in Montgomery County earns ... we're only asking to be average. We're finding more and more teachers are leaving Souderton to go elsewhere, and we'd like to stop that revolving door ... Teachers should be able to look at their own school district and say they are adequately paid."

Question: Please clarify the current dispute over "8.2 percent per year"; where does that figure come from and what does it mean?

Lukridge: "We each have numbers that we bring to the bargaining table: you make an offer, I make an offer, and we go back and forth. Eight-point-two is a parameter at the negotiation table, and we have our number and they have their number, that's what negotiations are all about... If our salary schedule is taken up by 2.5 percent, as the district is proposing, we still are so far behind what the average teacher will be paid in Montgomery County. We need way, way beyond that 2.5 percent; if we accept a contract at 2.5 percent, we would continue to be at the bottom of the county."

Question: Explain your understanding of the reserve fund -how much is in it, what it can and cannot be used for, how this could or could not fund salary increases for the teachers.

Lukridge: "That fund has kept growing. Since 2005, when that fund was at $9 million, according to facts presented by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, now that fund is in excess of $17 million; there's been almost a 100 percent increase in that reserve fund. The district will say they want to use that reserve fund for buildings, but I think that money should be spent on the children, not on buildings, and when you know you need to compromise and keep quality educators, it costs money to do that, so where do you want to put that money? Into educating students or into buildings?"

Question: What do you feel the public needs to know about negotiations and does not?

Lukridge: "I think the public has not really heard anything about how hard it's been to negotiate with the school board. We started negotiating in January, and gave them a full proposal in March, and did not see a full proposal back from them until June... They keep bringing back the same thing over and over again, it's like being in that movie 'Groundhog Day,' because the contract they proposed on Sept. 5 was the same as they had proposed on Sept. 1, and the same proposal they made back in January.

"One other thing that has disturbed the teachers during the course of the strike is the loss of our insurance coverage without our being notified. The district can continue to pay for our coverage during the strike, and be reimbursed after the strike is over... I find it to be unconscionable that the school district never let us know ahead of time that there was a possibility that we would be denied coverage. There were teachers who found out about that when they went to their doctor's office, or tried to get some medications or have procedures done, and were met with a statement that if they had AmeriHealth they were not covered anymore. That took them completely by surprise... it's not so much that we're not insured, because we're covered by COBRA now, but it's the fact of how it happened. They had to know they would do this ahead of time, because they did it so quickly, and that was what was very hard to take."