By DAN SOKIL

FRANCONIA — Some of the Souderton Area School District's teachers made sure the school board heard their voices Tuesday night.

"I'm here tonight to share some sad news with the board," said Alison Moran, a speech and language clinician at the district's West Broad Street Elementary School.

Moran described for the board how the district's speech therapy department had grown into a cohesive unit respected by neighboring districts, until this year's contract dispute between the school board and district teachers.

"As of last week, three of the speech therapists (one at EMC, one at Vernfield and one at Oak Ridge) have handed in their resignations. All are highly skilled ladies who have worked in this district for at least seven years each," said Moran.

One left for the Upper Perkiomen School District because their contract emphasizes the respect that district has for its teachers, Moran said, while the other two will get hefty raises in the Upper Dublin School District.

"What really saddens me is that most of the board members, and the public, never really appreciate the difference a good speech therapist can make, and what we just lost," said Moran.

District Superintendent Charles Amuso told Moran that the hiring process has already begun for one replacement speech therapist, and solicitor Jeffrey Sultanik pointed out that the district is facing several competitors for them.

"In a market-based economy, it's an issue of supply versus demand," said Sultanik. "There's a huge demand for speech therapists but right now we have, for example, a huge supply of high quality elementary school teachers instead."

Sultanik also indicated that the board would be open to negotiating separately with the speech therapists, apart from the nonbinding arbitration process the district and teachers union are currently engaged in.

"This board is prepared, right now, to sit down and negotiate with you a separate compensation scale for speech therapists in this district," Sultanik said.

"It's not unheard of to have different classifications for different skills levels," he said, "because it's an issue of supply and demand and different skill sets. We're open to the concept."

However, Sultanik also said, even if the district accepted the last best contract offer from the teachers union, that still would not solve the speech therapist problem.

"We need to address this in a different way, and in a creative way that's consistent with the market and the larger economy," he said.

Chris Luck, a physics and chemistry teacher at the high school, then told a story similar to Moran's about his science department.

"In 2000 I was hired with 11 other teachers, and now I'm the only one left. I've seen three new chemistry teachers brought in for the same position in the last four years," said Luck.

He estimated that offers from neighboring districts could have made him $40,000 wealthier at his current experience level, and $70,000 wealthier by the time he would reach the top step of their salary scales instead of Souderton's.

"I've seen three teachers with a combined 50 years of experience leave in the last month, and I can tell you, if you walk down those halls just about every teacher is actively looking at jobs in other districts," Luck said.

"It would be a shame if we had a shiny new high school building and no experienced teachers to fill it, because that building is just walls. The teachers are where education comes from," he said.