Strike vote looming? Budget talks heat up between Kent School District, teachers union

With just over a month left before a meeting at which the Kent Education Association has tentatively scheduled a strike vote, negotiations between the district and the union which represents teachers are heating up.

At the July 23 bargaining session, the district presented the union with a new compensation proposal that includes across-the-board increases in salaries that it says should make Kent teacher salaries more competitive with surrounding districts.

The current teacher contract expires Aug. 31. The next member meeting of the union is scheduled for Aug. 26.

According to a letter from School Board President Jim Berrios and Superintendent Edward Lee Vargas, the increases range from 3.36 percent for starting teachers to 2.49 percent for teachers at the top of the pay scale. An additional 1.5 percent increase is figured for the second year of the proposal for an overall average increase of 4.4 percent over the next two years.

The proposal does not include the yearly increases teachers receive for an additional year of experience.

The total increase to district expenditures is estimated at $3.5 million for the 2009-2010.

“We want to be competitive with local districts while also maintaining financial security,” Kent School District Communications Director Becky Hanks said Friday. “This proposal does just that.”

Union representatives, however, say the district’s proposal does not go far enough in meeting their requests.

“They’re probably at roughly half our proposal in their first year,” said KEA Representative Mike McNett, but added, “It’s definitely a step in the right direction on compensation.”

Though the Kent School Board has said throughout budget discussions this year that part of the budget issues surrounded an attempt to pay teachers more, this is the first time any additional compensation offers have been made.

In a tight budget year in which cuts in programs were expected, the money for additional salary increases comes from a combination of savings and cuts of more than $3.4 million in the administration, including Central Administration and individual building administration, as well as $3.2 million in reductions from the community priority list, which was created through a series of public workshops this past winter.

Federal stimulus dollars also play a role in the district’s ending fund balances, which came in higher than expected by nearly $2 million.

The increases in total compensation come in the form of what is known as TRI money (Time/Responsibility/Incentive pay), formerly known as “effective education money.” TRI money is additional salary money that is paid by individual districts on top of the state salary funding.

Included in the funding are an additional Learning Improvement Day, funding for which was cut by the state. Additionally, the proposal includes a $5,000 per year stipend for Educational staff Associates, such as speech pathologists and therapists, psychologists and other roles the district has difficulty filling without outside contracts.

Commitment pay for teachers – for their agreement to work for the district again the following year – also was doubled to $2,000 and first-year teachers were included for the first time.

Hanks said the district commissioned a study of total compensation at nine surrounding districts to assess where Kent stands in relation to its neighbors.

The results showed Kent to be between 2.2 percent and 4.8 percent below the surrounding districts; however when Bellevue and Tacoma are taken out of the mix (both districts are “grandfathered” in and receive higher state funding than Kent), Kent is only behind by 1 percent to 3.6 percent, Hanks said.

According to Hanks, the new salary scale would put Kent teachers in the “middle of the pack” and is based on total compensation.

McNett said the union uses a different group of 20 Puget Sound Area districts, which include several northern districts and Seattle, as part of its data, and the new proposal would still only put Kent at No. 15 among those 20 districts. He said the district’s proposal was not “reasonable,” characterizing it as the “start of real bargaining,” though they do recognize it is a change in district position.

McNett also said the union has scaled back on its requests, citing the union’s removal from its proposal of a cost-of-living increase that it had outlined, despite the state’s wage freeze on teacher salaries due to the budget crisis.

At the top of the district’s offer, however, is a statement that rejection of the current package will result in the package “being withdrawn and a return to the district’s previous positions on all proposals.”

“If the association chooses to reject it, we will continue to negotiate but this one will be withdrawn,” Hanks said.

McNett said many of the union’s issues have not yet been addressed, including workload and compensation. The union also is not pleased with a district request to discuss the layoff and recall language, which in the new proposal would be discussed this fall with a Dec. 1 deadline for hammering out the details.

Both sides said the layoff language needed work, but union officials said they worried about striking current language before agreeing on something new.

The proposal from the district is not meant to be the be-all-end-all to discussions, according to Hanks, who added there were still negotiations to be had on other issues, but this represented the district’s best salary proposal.

McNett said the union “is not accepting the package wholesale” but said he looked forward to further negotiations before the Aug. 26 meeting, which will either be to ratify contract or take a strike vote.

“We’re hoping it will be for contract ratification,” he said.

For more information on the district’s proposal visit http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/ksd/cr/2009-10BudgetTimeline.html