Tamaqua Area School District teachers have a new three-year contract.

The district's school board held a special meeting at 4 p.m. Thursday, and the teachers met in a separate area at the same time.The school board convened only long enough to go into executive session, which lasted about 45 minutes.There are 150 teachers in the district, and 130 showed up for the vote, which was 111-19.According to the terms of the contract, the teachers on average will get a raise of about $1,500 per year for each of the three years.The teachers agreed to changes in their insurance coverage regarding their premium share and the amount of the deductible.District Superintendent Carol Makuta explained that in the previous contract, the cost of the health care premiums was based on a percentage of a teacher's salary."The cost of the premium will now be based on the actual cost of the health care," Makuta said. "It is no longer calculated as a percentage of their salary."As an example, she compared the premium costs for two hypothetical teachers, one making $50,000 and one making $40,000. In the former contract, each of those teachers would have paid a different amount toward the premium, based on the amount of their salary; under the new pact, each employee will pay a premium based on the health care cost.In a further effort to save money on health care costs, the teachers agreed to have higher deductibles as part of their health care plans."The main points of discussion were salaries, health care and professional development," Makuta said. "With professional development, we reached a compromise in the number of credits needed from the instructional to professional levels; the teachers will be allowed to take a lesser amount."All the school board members present approved the new pact. They were President Larry Wittig, Bob Betz, Bryan Miller, Wanda Zuber, Eileen Meiser, Mark Rother and Dan Schoener."Thank you to the negotiating team," Meiser said after the vote.Schoener, Wittig and Miller were on the negotiating team.The Tamaqua Area Education Association chief negotiator was Kathy Mansell.She was joined by Bill Kimber, Frank Wentzel, John Buglio, Cindy Viel and Tom Kanger.