You may recall that last year we established a two-year agreement with the district, with only a few articles to be revisited this summer. Those involve teacher compensation and the holidays for 2014-15. The agreement called for us to begin deliberations in July.
The district's business manager asked us to wait until after the new board had been seated and given some direction, which seemed reasonable. In the meantime, the district republished its budget because enrollment had been higher than expected, and we believed teachers would share in that largesse.
However, it is not so simple. As you know, our bargaining unit includes all teachers of USD 453 and the Leavenworth County Special Education Cooperative. Our organization bargains for all teachers together, but the budgets for the two entities are separate. They are intertwined in many ways, but separate. The costs of educating our special needs students have risen, the state's funding has decreased, and the business manager naturally feels the need to be conservative in planning for the next year. The state's contributions toward special ed were decreased this year and he has to assume they could be decreased again (while costs continue to increase). Making that assumption, there doesn't appear to be money in the budget to raise salaries. The co-op cannot ask the other participating districts for additional funding until after enrollment counts. So we will wait a little longer to begin bargaining.
If you watch the Board of Education's budget meeting on television, you will hear the business manager say that they have talked with the teachers about the fact that the budget he presented does not include raises. We need to make it clear that the fact that we have discussed this and understand the position he is in does not mean we agree! We feel strongly that if the districts in the special education cooperative like the additional responsiveness of their new structure, then they will have to shoulder the additional cost of tripling their special education administrative staff. That increase in supervisory staff should not happen at the expense of teachers who accept employment assuming that they will receive a step raise for each year of experience, according to the salary schedule.