In what could be a landmark agreement for school districts in suburban Chicago, teachers and the school board in Brookfield-LaGrange Park District 95 last week ratified a new four-year contract that eliminates step raises and ties all future increases in pay to the district’s annual tax levy.
By eliminating annual step increases – raises above and beyond annual increases to base pay -officials believe District 95 can ensure teaching positions in tough economic times won’t be eliminated since any pay increases are tied directly to district revenues.
“The biggest struggle school districts have is that they have tax caps that limit how much money they can get,” said board member Thomas Powers. “This will allow us to live within our means. We’re not going to exceed the amount we’re taking in. Teachers know their jobs are safe and it will allow us to focus on building the curriculum.”
John LaBarbera, a member of the school board’s negotiating committee, agreed.
“I think the terms allow District 95 to have a stable and robust educational environment for the community,” LaBarbera said. “I hope this is a model contract in the coming years.”
School districts’ ability to levy additional tax dollars each year is capped by the consumer price index (CPI) or 5 percent, whichever is less. The new contract calls for raises to be 90 percent of the CPI in the first two years and 95 percent of the CPI in the last two years.
For the 2010-11 school year, the CPI is 2.7 percent, which means teachers across the board will get raises of 2.4 percent. In the past, teachers would also have received step raises, which could boost salaries another 3 percent or higher. Teachers, in addition, also received bumps in pay for getting advanced degrees and completing additional graduate-level coursework.
The step raises, however, have been eliminated completely, although teachers can receive additional pay for graduate coursework and degrees. In fact the new contract provides an incentive for doing so. Teachers can receive permanent pay raises of between $1,500 and $3,000 for completing additional coursework or getting a master’s degree.
Teachers hired this year have 10 years to complete 15 hours of continuing education credits and five years to complete subsequent benchmarks. Failing to meet the benchmarks on time means a teacher would receive just 50 percent of any annual base salary increases until the next benchmark is met.
“The board very much values continuing education in our district and they want to reward that and offer it as an incentive. There are a group of teachers sitting at bachelor’s degrees with no movement at all, and there was no way to give them more of an incentive to move over,” said Superintendent Mark Kuzniewski, who added that there are about six teachers of the district’s 85 who would fall into that category.
“If they sit there and do nothing, we’re not going to reward that type of behavior.”
Matt Hanser, Region 46 UniServ director for the Illinois Education Association and the lead negotiator for the Teachers Association of Brookfield (TAB), referred questions to S.E. Gross Middle School sixth-grade teacher Cary Preston, president of TAB. Preston did not respond to an e-mail from the Landmark seeking comment about the contract prior to press time.
The new contract also allows for tenured teachers to earn a $1,000 bonus by participating in a new program that encourages excellence in teaching. Teachers themselves, according to Kuzniewski, came up with the bonus program, whose intent, according to the contract “is to allow teachers to engage in rigorous, meaningful work towards a goal that supports the overall mission and vision of the district.”
Such efforts could be state, district or regional presentations by a teacher, facilitating a district committee, developing new programs or providing more learning opportunities for students.
Any plan must be submitted to and approved by the superintendent and school board, according to the contract.
“This is what we want to reward,” Kuzniewski said, “because we want to inspire others to do it.”
According to a salary schedule included in the contract, in 2010-11, a new teacher in District 95 will be paid a base salary of $39,127. A new teacher with a master’s degree would earn $42,673.
The contract keeps in place health care benefits approved in the district’s previous contract with teachers. The district will pay 85 percent of single and family PPO coverage and 100 percent of single and family HMO coverage.
It also retains a $1,000 health reimbursement arrangement for teachers who don’t participate in the district’s health care plan. Those teachers are eligible to have up to $1,000 go toward paying outside medical claims.
In addition, the contract also brings raises for stipend positions (coaches, band leaders, club moderators, etc.) in line with base pay raises tied to CPI.