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District offers 1.25 percent pay hikes, cuts bargaining options

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City school district Board of Education offered an average of 1.25 percent in pay increases for teachers and support staff in the board’s opening round of contract negotiations Wednesday afternoon.

It also presented a list of items that will no longer be part of the bargaining process, made possible by major changes last year in the state’s collective bargaining law for public employees.

Several teachers and support staff members at the meeting reacted with surprise and concern over the number of items that will now be determined by the school board as part of the employee handbook, rather than be part of collective bargaining.

Several members of the teacher and staff bargaining committees talked with the Press after the meeting, but they declined to be individually identified.

“If I say something they don’t like they could get rid of me and my position without cause, other than ‘we just want you gone now,’” one person said, referring to the administration and school board. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, no, we’d never fire somebody for that,’ but I have no guarantee of that. A few years ago I wouldn’t have thought about it. Now we’re really stripped of all kinds of protection.”

One person said, “It’s just a trust thing. I wish I could say I trust that they have their employees’ best interests at heart, rather than just gaining control over every aspect of our day.”

Superintendent Dan Cox, who led the district negotiation team, said after the meeting that it was the school board’s decision to remove some things from bargaining that were optional.

“It’s an opportunity to put some things into board policy and the employee handbook,” he said. “We left several things in, but we’re trying to streamline them a little bit.”

Two weeks ago the teachers association had asked for an $800 increase in base pay, which it said represented about a 3 percent average pay increase.

The staff association asked for a 35 cents per hour pay increase, which it said equaled about a 3.4 percent increase in total wages.

The district’s negotiating team countered Wednesday with an offer of a $415 increase in the base with no step advancements for teachers, and a 20 cent per hour increase in pay for the support staff group.

The district proposal also said the school district is changing from an insurance plan that covered 100 percent of health care costs after the deductible was met, to one that will require covered staff and family to pay 5 percent co-insurance after deductibles.

The district also proposed a major shift in how school district employees’ other benefits are determined.

For teachers, Iowa law now does not allow collective bargaining for such things as insurance coverage, staff evaluation procedures, voluntary and involuntary transfer rules and staff reduction decisions, along with some others.

Many other items are allowed to be bargained for, but are optional at the discretion of the employer, in this case the school board.

Optional Items that the district proposal says will no longer be part of the teacher bargaining process include several aspects of determining teacher’s work year, hours and their placement on the salary schedule.

It would also remove from bargaining a lengthy list of types of leave, including sick leave, personal days, funeral leave, family illness or injury, military reserve, parental leave and others.

That doesn’t mean that those types of leave will be taken away or even necessarily changed from current policy, only that they will be decided by the school board now rather than through collective bargaining.

The board did leave several optional items in the bargaining process, including the grievance procedure, some aspects of the work day and some other aspects of pay.

The teachers association completed its current school year contract before the new bargaining law went into effect last year, so this is the first time it is bargaining under the new rules.

“This is all new to us, so we just don’t know how it’s going to work,” said teacher bargaining team member Jim Lundberg Wednesday.

The staff association completed its contract last year after the new law was in effect, so many of the changes in bargaining for that group had already taken place.

The district proposal Wednesday for the staff group also removed several optional items from the bargaining process, including various aspects of the work day, overtime pay, holidays, vacation, sick leave, and various aspects of wages such as job classification and probationary periods.

Again, as with the teachers, that doesn’t necessarily mean those items will be changed, only that the decisions will be made by the school board, not as part of contract negotiations.

The first two meetings of collective bargaining — the initial requests by the employees and the initial offer by the employer — are open to the public. After that, negotiations are conducted in private.

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