This is the kind of stuff that gives school boards and teachers unions a bad reputation with their taxpayers.

The Fort Edward school board and teachers association have reached a memorandum of agreement on a new contract. Once the entire 61-member teachers association votes for it sometime early next week, the school board will approve it at a special meeting that same day.

Salaries and benefits make up 70 to 80 percent of each school budget, and school taxes make up about 65 percent of local residents' total property tax bills. Statewide over the last five years, school taxes have risen an average of 7 percent a year. So the impact of contracts on what citizens pay in taxes is significant.

What sticks in the public's craw time and time again is that despite the financial impact of these contracts, neither side involved in talks will release details of a deal until it's signed. That means the citizens get no say in the terms negotiated, and that the board and the teachers have signed a contract without knowing if those terms were acceptable to the people they serve.

We understand and appreciate the need to negotiate contracts in secret. And we've actually supported school boards and unions doing that. But when the negotiations have ended and the terms of the deal have been disclosed to both sides, the public should be invited in to offer their comments and suggestions.

Once the negotitions have ended, the need for keeping the terms secret from the public also ends. But school boards, and the teachers unions, like to push these deals through in secret so the public can't come to the meeting and throw a wrench into their nice, neat plans. It's unfair to the people paying the bills.

If the Fort Edward teachers association votes on the contract, and then the school board votes to approve it later the same day, that leaves virtually no time for the public to even be made aware of the meeting, much less be able to evaluate the contract and plan to attend the meeting to comment.

Teachers have been functioning under the terms of the old contract for a year; they can wait another week or so until the public has had a chance to weigh in on the new one.

In the spirit of public disclosure, the Fort Edward school board and teachers association should release terms of the new contract before the board votes on the final deal. Then the board should schedule a special meeting, with adequate advance public notice, to give the taxpayers time to digest the contract terms and convey their own opinions to the school board.

With so much tax money riding on this contract, it's only right that the taxpayers should have time to comment on it before it's too late to do anything about it.