Schools
Union: Parkland Teachers Not Asked To Reopen Contract
But union president said teachers are realistic about the district's budget woes as they look toward a possible early bird contract.
One day after the Parkland School Board approved a $138 million proposed budget for 2011-2012, the president of the teachers union said the administration never asked the union to reopen the current five-year contract in its last year nor did the teachers offer to do so.
Sandi Gackenbach, president of the Parkland Education Association, also said Wednesday that “it’s a could, not a would” regarding a written statement from the administration that the union “will focus on a pay freeze for the 2012-2013 year, the first year of a new contract.”
“It’s a negotiation so we’re not going to say we will take zero” for a pay increase the first year of a new contract, Gackenbach said. However, she added, “The teachers are realistic. They understand what’s going on.”
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Parkland School Board member David Kennedy had criticized teachers at Tuesday's board meeting for not making concessions for next year. “It’s absolutely greed on their part,” Kennedy said.
Gackenbach declined to respond directly to Kennedy’s statement. However, she said representatives of the teachers' union meet monthly with key administration officials and the union never was asked to make salary concessions for the 2011-2012 school year.
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“We agreed with our administration that we would finish this one (contract) and look to a new contract,” Gackenbach said.
Gackenbach said last month that the union would pursue a possible early-bird contract with the administration as a way to help with the district’s on-going budgetary issues. She said at the time it made more fiscal sense to do so. With more than 30 teachers possibly retiring at the end of the next school year, she said the district’s highest-paid teachers might forgo retirements if the current contract was frozen, affecting district costs longer term.
The current teachers contract calls for a 4.9 percent increase on the total payroll for the next school year. Raises depend on each teacher’s education level and years of service.
The Parkland School board passed its proposed $138 million budget Tuesday. Sixty full-time and part-time positions will be eliminated in the next school year, many through retirements and resignations.
In addition, Parkland administrators agreed to a for the next school year, saving the district $250,000. Spokeswoman Nicole McGalla said that affected 55 administrators, whose pay varies from $50,000 to $120,000.