After two grueling days of negotiations, we're well on our way to a new agreement with the Board of Education, at least on the non-money items.  (Money items have not yet been discussed--next meeting is July 10 at 9 a.m. at the district office.)  Here's a summary of what has been discussed so far.  Note that negotiations are ongoing, so changes in any of these items are still possible.  We'd appreciate your feedback! Since we represent all the teachers of Leavenworth at the bargaining table, we'd like to know what you think.  Just email us at lneanews@gmail.com.

Parent-Teacher Conferences:  The district wanted to eliminate the alternating schedule of the last two years and hold professional development on Fridays initially, but we have tentatively settled on holding conferences Wednesday evenings and Thursdays with a day off for teachers and students on Friday.

Grievance Procedure:  The district wants to eliminate level 4 (binding arbitration) from the agreement, and make the board of education's decision the final say.  The teacher team wants to keep binding arbitration as a last resort (it has been used twice in 30 years, by the way), and return the Association's right to file a grievance on behalf of a teacher or teachers. This is still being negotiated.

Assignment and Transfer: The teachers proposed a standard number of days to be given to teachers who are reassigned at the last minute, in order to move and potentially prepare to teach a different level or subject, or payment to teachers who do this work on their own time.  So far the district has agreed to 3 days of leave time to prepare, but has not agreed to compensate teachers who do the work over a weekend or cancel their vacation plans to prepare.  We have proposed 5 days or compensation or a combination of the two.  In order to make this possible, we have agreed to delay the date (now May 1) by which teachers are notified what they will teach in the next year.  We have also agreed to allow the district to post vacancies for only 7 days instead of 14, before they are filled. 
Leave Policy:  Double-dock days are no more! (At least, that is our tentative agreement.)  We had hoped to change the minimum leave reduction to 1 hour so that teachers who schedule their appointments very early or very late in the day would not have to take an entire half-day off and to start a leave pool for teachers similar to the one classified staff have, but we have abandoned those requests in favor of getting rid of double-dock days.
Calendar:  The district's initial proposal cut workdays at the end of the first and third quarters to 1/2 day, but in their most recent proposal those have been returned to a full day.  For special education teachers working in districts that have a calendar longer than Leavenworth's, we have added language that will allow the district to prorate their pay so that they don't have to choose between working for free or missing student contact time or professional development that their building colleagues are receiving.  Some of you will be disappointed that the teacher workday after the winter holiday in 2013-14 will be on a Friday, but that will prevent students from missing more than two weeks of school.

Evaluation:   The district's first few proposals stripped this article down to what is required by statute and removed the actual evaluation tool from our agreement so that it can be altered unilaterally by the district.  Since we now have a well-researched and valid teacher evaluation system tailored to our needs by a hard-working committee that included evaluators and evaluatees, there have been some long discussions about various elements of the current procedures.  Some of the questions that have been discussed...What is a reasonable maximum amount of time that should elapse between an observation and the meeting between administrator and teacher?  How long should it take until the teacher's summative evaluation is delivered?
In the district's most recent proposal, they returned to language that is closer to the current language.  However, they still want to remove the evaluation tool from the appendix, which would mean they could change it at will.  Some changes they mentioned in discussion are understandable and supported by your comments in our survey, since the forms don't fit well for some teaching positions. However, they also mentioned changing the forms to fit individual buildings and we have concerns about the efficacy and efficiency of having scores of different evaluation forms.  They propose to share these with the Association two weeks before they start using them and give us the opportunity to provide feedback. 

Other changes they have proposed in Evaluation:  making permanent the out-of-district sped teachers being evaluated by non-USD453 staff, changing school days to calendar days for deadlines, removal of a minimum length of time for a formal observation, addition of a statement that informal observations can be used in the summative eval, requiring only written AND/OR verbal feedback after an observation, and the addition of a section on the evaluation instrument. 
Resignation Incentive (Early Retirement):  Initially the district wanted to end the compensation piece of this article in 2013 instead of 2015 and end the contribution to health insurance in 2020 instead of 2025.  We expressed serious concerns that teachers considering early retirement in 2014 and 2015 would already have done their retirement planning and the district listened.  This request has been dropped in their recent proposals.
So there you have it, a short and sweet summary of what has happened so far.  Keep in mind that agreement we may have reached on any of these items is tentative until the process is over.  As far as salary, we are hoping to restructure our salary schedule into what is often referred to as a "compacted salary schedule."  This is a method that we (and KNEA) believe maximizes the annual growth of career level teacher salaries and total salary over the long run.

After a board member resigned, the school district asked to cancel the first two negotiating sessions.  That means our first real bargaining sessions won't occur until June 21 and 22.