Mediation fails to produce an agreement

The negotiations team reports that the mediation session last night failed to produce an agreement.

The district's offer is for a one-time $500 payment for all returning teachers (i.e., all special ed and regular ed teachers who were with the district in 2012-13). However, that payment does not put the teacher on the right row of the salary schedule and does not increase pay for subsequent years. Teacher annual salaries could therefore go down next year, depending on what happens with negotiations for 2014-15. And that's after take home pay has gone down because KPERS contributions were increased, and will increase again in one year.

The district's representatives claim that the Special Education Cooperative's Superintendents Advisory Board (SAB) prevents them from increasing their offer.  It may be true that the district and the SAB do not want to increase the cost of special education teachers to the other districts represented by the SAB, who may be offering them alternative employment in the near future.  However, the A in SAB stands for "advisory."

USD 453 has always had the responsibility to make the personnel and financial decisions for the co-op. One of the advantages of being the co-op sponsor is that they've received (i.e., paid themselves), out of that budget, an "overhead" payment. Of course there are costs associated with operating the co-op. Most of those costs come directly out of the co-op budget. However, the co-op does not have HR and payroll clerks paid directly by the co-op, and district administrators supervise and evaluate the special ed directors. To compensate the district for these people's time, some payment to the district is understandable and necessary.  But the co-op budget's ending balance has dropped each year since the co-op reorganized.  This implies that either the co-op budget has been managed poorly (from your emails and survey comments we know many of you agree), or the budget has been deliberately spent down in anticipation of the co-op's end, or both.

So perhaps this year the co-op, managed by USD 453, should pay USD 453 a little less than the $350,000 it has budgeted, and then the co-op budget would have more than enough to get this settled!

We believe the people who have the authority to make this decision are the seven members of the Board of Education for USD 453.  The superintendents of surrounding districts should not be given the authority to dictate what USD 453 pays its teachers.  It's time for teachers to let their board members know that they expect this to be settled and for teachers to be paid for their year of service as the salary schedule indicates.