EAST PROVIDENCE — Continuing its pressure on the teachers, the School Committee filed a second unfair labor practices charge against the educators’ negotiating team.

It is the second complaint sent to the state Labor Relations Board in two weeks. The first charges that the East Providence Education Association, which is part of the National Education Association Rhode Island family, isn’t bargaining a new contract in good faith. The filing last Monday specifically claims the union is insisting on secret negotiation sessions and wants the district to ignore a City Charter change that gives the City Council final approval on all contracts, including those for school employees.

The current contract with the union, which protects the city’s roughly 500 teachers, expires Oct. 31. The two sides began sit-downs in August, but have yet to settle on ground rules.

The second complaint — filed Friday — says negotiations aren’t progressing because the union hasn’t named an arbitrator since Sept. 15, when the School Committee told teachers it would seek arbitration services. The complaint also says that by law the teachers must choose an arbitrator within seven days and tell the district its choice in writing.

“It’s premature to name an arbitrator,” EPEA representative Jeanette Woolley, who is also an assistant executive director at NEARI, said yesterday.

Woolley said the district hasn’t even officially asked the American Arbitrators Association to step in. She also said the next step should be “remediation and conciliation” rather than arbitration.

She said it is the school board that is unwilling to budge. There isn’t a benefit to allowing the media and public to observe negotiations. That, she said, could add “political maneuvering and public grandstanding” to an already “delicate process of give and take.” In addition, she said, the city failed to get the charter change ratified by the General Assembly, which is mandatory.

Finally, she said, “We’re fully willing to arbitrate if remediation and conciliation fails.”

Yet school board representatives say time is of the essence.

The district is projecting a more than $4.2-million deficit for the next fiscal year, which in East Providence begins Nov. 1. Teacher salaries and benefits — educators do not pay anything toward their health-care costs in the current contract — are among the biggest expenditures in the school budget.

“The School Committee has urged the union to come to the bargaining table to help it solve a financial crisis that threatens the school district’s educational program,” Lisa Blais said in a statement yesterday. Blais is the spokeswoman for school district lawyer Daniel K. Kinder, who filed the complaint for the school board. “The union has refused to bargain.

Blais’ statement said that the “East Providence teachers rank among the 10 highest paid districts in the state. They are the only teachers who make no contribution to their health insurance. They have only 181 work days per year. Their pension benefits are generous and secure.”

Woolley said the teachers do have a 181 working days, but the pension and benefits are “neither generous nor secure.”

Blais said the union’s “refusal” to bargain and arbitrate violates the law and is another “instance of bad faith,” and said it must stop.

“This fiscal crisis directly threatens the quality of education East Providence students will receive in the future,” she said in the statement. “A new contract must be reached immediately to preserve the educational programs and rescue the school district and taxpayers.”

apina@projo.com