EASTON, Pa. – The Easton Area School District’s board of directors voted 6-3 Tuesday night to adopt a three-year administrator compensation plan, commonly known as Act 93.
Act 93 refers to a state law that requires school boards to establish written compensation and benefit plans for school employees who do not belong to traditional collective bargaining units.
Board members Josh Davis, Brian Snyder and William Whitman voted against the compensation plan.
The plan begins July 1 and is in effect until June 30, 2029.
The basic plan calls for Act 93 employees who make over $100,000 per year to receive 2% increases in each of the three years; Act 93 employees who make between $65,000 and $99,999 will receive 2.25% increases, and employees making under $65,000 will receive 2.5% increases.
John Remaley, district supervisor of safe schools, spoke in opposition to the plan and asked the board to reject it.
Remaley said he met with district police officers earlier in the day and the decision was made to attend the board meeting and ask the board to achieve equity for the officers within the Act 93 agreement.
The school district has a dedicated force of police officers who work along with additional security personnel.
“When it came time to start discussing the agreement, I submitted a proposal to my immediate supervisor detailing where we found some shortcomings in the previous agreements when it was specific to our police officers,” Remaley said. “We began looking at it from the point of view of the base salary and how our elementary school officers were compensated.”
Easton Area School District’s superintendent said there was an unprecedented number of arrests at last Friday’s home game.
Remaley explained that the officers in the elementary schools are fairly compensated at a rate consistent with patrolmen throughout the Lehigh Valley, which he said is about $67,000 a year.
“So next, I looked at our secondary school officers, and their duties and responsibilities on the daily basis are decidedly different,” he said. “There are more students, there are older students, and the responsibility is different. As a matter of fact, the students in their building are above the age of adjudication, which means there are arrests made.”
Remaley said that means there are juvenile filings, court appearances, parental meetings and threat assessment meetings.
“There’s a whole range of duties that they have that the elementary school officers do not have,” Remaley said. “And I looked at past Act 93 agreements, and the district actually recognizes that there is a difference in responsibilities and duties for several other members of that Act 93 agreement, specifically those of building custodians and building principals.”
“There is, in fact, an 11% salary increase when you take the average salary for secondary principals as opposed to elementary school principals,” Remaley said. “And there is a 15% increase for secondary head custodians over custodians in the elementary schools.”
He suggested the secondary school officers should be making about 13% more than their elementary counterparts.
“I’m asking you to consider sitting down and crafting a more acceptable, more equitable, and overall, a more fair agreement to every one of the Act 93 members,” Remaley concluded. “I’m asking you folks to be leaders tonight.”
Officer James Siegfried also spoke and told the board that in the 2025-26 school year, he had to deal with a total of 31 arrests and three automobile accidents because of student drivers at the high school.
The board did not discuss the matter, but school board President Jodi Hess said the vote was a difficult decision.
“In the position of being president, I cannot always vote the way that I feel is proper or my personal feelings or opinion,” Hess said. “And this was an agreement that took a while. There are items in it that I don’t necessarily agree with, but at this point in time, I have to make sure that I’m looking at what is going to keep us going forward.”
Hess added that moving forward she would like to see some of the groups separated out from the Act 93 agreement.