Your LNEA negotiating team reached tentative agreement on the terms of your contract, including the negotiated agreement, for the 2008-09 school year.
In a nutshell, we've tentatively agreed to adding $600 to the base, which works out to be an average 4.5% increase. We've agreed to add 15 minutes to the student day, which means we will be working an 8 hour day instead of a 7 hour 45 minute day. In partial compensation for adding the 15 minutes, we also have tentatively agreed to reducing the total number of contract days from 189 to 186, building in some additional inclement weather days, and converting one half day of inservice at the beginning of the school year to additional "work day" time. Work days, uninterrupted by meetings, will occur at the following times: 1.5 days before school begins, 1 full day at the end of first, second and third quarters, and at least one half day at the end of the school year. There will be no increase in the board's contribution to the health insurance fringe benefit.
Elementary planning time has been increased from 220 minutes per week to 250 minutes per week minimum.
We've retained binding arbitration of grievances in the negotiated agreement, and we have retained the early retirement program, but have agreed to form a committee to study the possibility of phasing out the program in favor of an alternative program that perhaps would involve mutual contributions to a 403b. But for now, the early retirement policy has been retained.
There are other changes involving deadlines for lateral movement, supplemental increases for speech pathologists and occupational therapists.
More details and a complete list of proposed changes will be mailed to you early next week. We will send you a summary of all proposed changes to the negotiated agreement, a proposed salary and supplemental schedule, and a postcard for you to vote in favor of or against ratification. We need you to mark your vote and drop it in the mail to us as soon as you can.
The team recommends ratification.
Thanks to all who expressed their support as we worked through the negotiations process this year. We truly appreciate all your efforts.
As soon as you get your ratification information in the mail, if you have questions, please email us at lneanews@gmail.com
Monday, June 23, 2008
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Overall this seems like a livable contract proposal, but I did some hasty math...
ReplyDeleteAdding 15 minutes to the duty day translates into an approximate increase in duty time of 3 additional duty days, or a 1.5% - 1.6% increase. The $$$ effect of this increase in duty time for a 189 or 186 duty day contract reduces the 4.5% pay increase to 3%, more or less. This needs to be borne in mind.
The post indicates the reduction of duty days to 186 was a partial compensation for lengthening the duty day. What are the other compensations?
Doug Smith
LHS
We believe that an increase in the duty day of 15 minutes per day is equal to a 3% increase - obviously in cold hard cash we should have gotten at least a 7.5-8% raise, if the average raise in this area can be assumed to be about 4.5%. If we didn't get it in cash, we should have gotten it ALL in days, and we didn't - we got 3 days instead of the 5 or 6 that it should have been. The remainder of the "compensation" for this increase in minutes on the duty day comes in a variety of other concessions made in the contract, that can't easily be translated to a dollar value. They dropped their demand to take binding arbitration of grievances out of the contract as soon as they saw that we might consider working 15 minutes longer. We eventually got them to agree to drop their proposal to completely strip the early retirement package out of our negotiated agreement - at least for the time being. They were wanting to go BACKWARDS on the lateral movement article, and we were able to maintain current contract language on that. We got mid-term raises to be allowed for those who finish an advanced degree in December. Those are a few of the other things we got in trade for the 15 minutes. A mail-back postcard ballot will be coming your way next week. - The Negotiating Team
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