Teachers ask district for 2.3 percent raise in initial contract proposal

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Education Association presented its initial proposal to the Charles City Community School District on Wednesday, seeking a 2.3 percent increase in salary and benefits.

CCEA chief negotiator Tyler Downing said he believes the association’s proposal won’t be too far removed from the district’s initial proposal.

“I think we’re on the same page, so I’m expecting something very close to what we’re seeing here,” Downing said. “The district has been very willing to work with us and talk with us and get our input, as well as us getting their input.”

The district will offer its initial exchange next Wednesday.

“Hopefully we can come to an agreement,” Downing said.

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

The CCEA also proposed that the contract would be valid through the 2021-22 school year.

“We did propose a three-year contract so we don’t have to go through this process every year,” Downing said.

The total salary increase in the settlement last year was 1.67 percent. The teachers had initially asked for a 3 percent increase in pay, while the district countered with an offer of 1.25 percent last year.

State collective bargaining rules adopted two years ago limit negotiations to only base wages for many public employees. Employers are no longer required to negotiate over such issues as health insurance, staff evaluation procedures, job transfer seniority and staff reduction criteria.

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 Charles City school board.

Even though school districts in Iowa are no longer required by law to do so, Charles City still kept most of the items in the contract and up for negotiation last year. There are a handful of things now illegal to negotiate, then there is a list of things that are “permissive.”

“They have to bargain on base salary; the rest of it is permissive language, where they can negotiate if they want,” Downing said. “Mike’s done a great job to say that what’s in the contract now is the bare minimum,” he said, referring to district Superintendent Mike Fisher.

“He’s said we want to do better than that,” Downing said. “He’s said that if we want to hold people to better expectations, what better place to put it than right there in the contract.”

Among the items the teachers proposed was an adjustment to banked sick days to provide an increase in paternity and maternity leave, up to a total of eight weeks for the individual. This proposal will combine the individual’s sick and personal leave with leave that has been donated by other employees.

The CCEA is asking for up to 12 weeks in paid maternity leave if an individual has the accumulated sick days. For the birth of a child, the father would be granted five days without loss of pay.

“We added some maternity leave in there to maybe attract some younger teachers,” Downing said. “That’s not currently in our contract, so if we want to be a destination school obviously that’s a good thing for new teachers.”

Currently teachers receive 15 days in paid maternity leave. Downing suggested that might be seen as a negative to a young teacher who wants to start a family in the community.

“If they only get 15 days, does that make them leave Charles City because of that?” he asked.

Downing said the district and association have been working on “interest-based bargaining.”

“We tried it, we went on a retreat together, we did some culture-building tactics to get where we are and to build some trust,” he said.

Teachers on the negotiation team are Dana Sullivan, Phoebe Pittman, Jim Lundberg, Renee Boss and Brian Bohlen.