By Tracy Ouellette
Staff Writer
The Waterford Graded School District board Monday night approved the 2011-12 contract with the Waterford Elementary Education Association.
“Just to be clear, we’re finally putting to rest the contract, not for this year, not for next year, but for last year,” explained board member Paul Beyerl.
The problem, said board member Dan Jensen, was that the School Board wanted to use money in the budget to increase the starting salaries of the lower-end teachers and the union wanted the money available for wage increases to be used equally for all teachers.
District Administrator Chris Joch said Tuesday that the board members felt the starting salaries need to be increased to attract quality teachers to the district.
He said that Waterford Graded ranked in the bottom third in starting salariesm at $34,549, when he polled area schools.
Joch went on to say that board members felt that the money available should be used for the lower-end teachers because the higher-end teachers had received a “substantial bump” in salary in the previous round of negotiations for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years.
The board had wanted to raise the starting salaries to $38,000 to compete with other districts, but met with resistance from the teachers’ union.
When an agreement with the teachers’ union was not reached by September 2012, a state mediator was brought in and a tentative agreement hashed out between the School Board and the Education Association negotiating teams. The School Board made several concessions, including lowering the starting salary to $36,500 in an attempt to resolve the matter.
However, the contract needed to be ratified by the union and when teachers voted, it didn’t pass.
Beyerl noted that not all the district teachers could vote on the contract. According to Joch, only dues-paying members of the union are allowed to vote.
Negotiations broke down between the union and School Board after the vote.
Joch said that in November 2012 a teacher came to him, asking if the board’s original offer was still on the table. After checking with the board members, Joch told the teacher it was, but the board wanted an answer by the end of December.
The Education Association members voted in the middle of December and the contract was again rejected.
Joch said it is not clear if only dues-paying members of the union voted this time.
Negotiations once again came to a stand still and in March the teachers’ union put in a request for state meditation.
The same state mediator who helped the two factions come to an agreement in September met with School Board and Education Association representatives May 16.
The mediator advised that he believed the board and union were at an impasse and as such, the board’s last offer, which included the $36,500 for starting salary in September, would be implemented as soon as possible.
The new contract also includes a $250 annual increase to the base salaries of the teachers on the higher end of the pay scale, those who were earning between $36,722 and $57,727.
Teachers in the lower-end of the pay scale, earning $34,549 to $36,015, all received pay bumps to $36,500.
Several School Board members expressed frustration with how long it took to reach an agreement and the fact that not once – but twice – an agreement reached between union representatives and the School Board was voted down.
Joch said the board has been working to reward teachers in other ways and saod that 80 percent of the district’s teachers received supplemental pay (merit-based) in their May 15 paychecks.
“It was a one-time stipend, added to payroll for performance in the 2012-13 school year,” said Joch.
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