The South Butler Education Association moved closer to a strike Wednesday after voting to reject a fact-finding report regarding its contract dispute with South Butler School District.

“We are more than willing to go back to the table and go through the outstanding issues with the board, but I can't imagine — if we aren't able to come to a deal in the relatively near future — that a strike will be avoidable,” said Brooke Witt, association representative.

Witt said the fact-finding report was rejected by a 97 percent vote.

The teachers union and district have been in a contract dispute since 2014, when the previous contract ended. The union requested a fact-finding hearing to the Pennsylvania Labor Board in July, and it was held in August by fact-finder Jane DeSimone.

Witt said the union voted against the fact-finding report, in part, because it recommended no wage increases for teachers for the first two years of the contract.

“They wouldn't receive any compensation or credit on the salary schedule for the years that they had worked, so that was clearly a big stumbling block,” Witt said.

Teachers are given raises on a “step movement” basis, receiving a predetermined raise based on a scale that includes 20 levels of salary.

DeSimone recommended that for the first two years of the contract, there should be no step movement, and that there should be step movement for Year 3.

For each of the last three years of the contract, DeSimone recommended that the teachers receive their usual step movement raises, as well as an average of a 3 percent increase in pay on top of that.

Another recommendation made was to eliminate language from the previous contract that district solicitor Tom Breth said limits how teachers can utilize the final 10 minutes of a school day to educate students.

Witt said the school day was extended by 10 minutes in the last contract, and that this recommendation was another reason for the union's rejection of the fact-finding report.

“The concern is that will allow the district to create a nine-period day and ultimately eliminate teaching positions because it would have more flexibility in respect to the staffing,” Witt said.

DeSimone also recommended a qualified — by the IRS' standards — high-deductible health care plan for teachers that included a health savings account fully funded by the district.

In addition, DeSimone recommended that teachers who teach various grades be required to attend, with additional compensation, all school open houses that include their classes.

She added a stipulation that there should be no more than two open houses per week.

She also recommended that teacher in-service days be increased from a 5-hour work day to a 7.5-hour work day, which is a full work day for the teachers.

A first fact-finding process was conducted in 2015. The district voted to approve the results of the process, while the union voted to reject the findings.

The district voted Wednesday at a school board meeting to accept the fact-finding results. Because the union voted against the results, both the district and union have 10 days from Wednesday to vote again. If either side votes against the results, negotiations will continue.

Witt said she expects the union to again vote against the results. “If it's rejected by us again, we would want to go back to the table and try to work through the issues before a work stoppage,” she said. “But if the district's unwilling to do that, or the results of that are not successful, we're 3½ years out (from a contract). I don't know where else we go.”