Teachers negotiate pay raises

The Whitefish School District is waiting to hear from the teachers union after the school board approved a contract that was later rejected by members of the Whitefish Education Association.

The district’s attorney Mike Dahlem said he expects to hear from union leadership soon and that a meeting between the two sides could take place later this week.

The school board in December approved a proposed one-year contract that would have gone into effect for the 2013-14 school year. The contract included a 1 percent pay raise and a one-time $850 bonus.

“We meant well,” Dahlem said during a district negotiations committee meeting last week. “We wanted to give them something without obligating us in the future because of the budget.”

According to the district, the bonus was a way of giving the teachers more money while not tying the district to an increase in the base salary that it might not be able to fund in next year’s budget.

However, the WEA turned down the proposed contract. According to WEA president Gayle Graf, the issue came down to salary.

“For over 90 percent of our members, salary was the reason not to ratify the offer in December,” she said in an email.

Negotiations between the two parties have lasted roughly 15 months. When a new agreement wasn’t reached, the teachers’ contracts reverted to a 2010-11 contract on July 1. The contract included a pay freeze, but teachers still get steps and lanes, moving up in the pay scale.

Last week Dahlem noted that an agreement needs to be reached quickly, in part, because of a March deadline for teachers to file paperwork if they intend to retire at the end of the school year.

“We have a couple of weeks to get this figured out,” he said.

WEA leaders were set to meet Tuesday and draft a proposal to the school board.

“The goal for both sides right now is to free up more money and we have been working together on a sensible retirement incentive which would be a huge savings to the district since the majority of our staff are veteran teachers,” Graf said.

Although the district is waiting for the union’s proposal, Dahlem did mention a possible scenario for the board to consider. He suggested a contract that would give a 1.5 percent increase in the base salary and offer a one-time retirement incentive of an undetermined amount.

Dahlem said that if enough teachers retire, the decrease in the district’s salary obligations would allow for the district to pay for an increase to the base salary rate.

“It’s a compromise between our 1 percent and their 2 percent,” he said. “A retirement bonus wouldn’t obligate us in the future. If we have enough retirements we’d be OK to give the increase in salary and wouldn’t have to let teachers go.”

Trustee Shawn Tucker called it a gamble to rely on enough teachers retiring to make up for the increase in the base salary.

“I don’t think they understand there is only so much money,” he said of the union. “They think we have some magic pot of gold and we don’t.”

Once the WEA comes forward with a proposal, district officials noted, a meeting between the two parties would be scheduled immediately.