Concessions ahead in Bethel

The Bethel School District and its employees have an agreement — literally, a “Memorandum of Agreement.”

While bargaining for the Eugene School District and its teachers gets under way on Wednesday, the Bethel district in west Eugene has solved that piece of its budget shortfall puzzle — more than a month before Eugene voters will decide the fate of a $17 million city income tax for schools in the two districts.

“This is the third year in a row that we’ve taken concessions,” said Tom Grimsley, a Cascade Middle School teacher and bargaining chairman for the Bethel teachers’ union. “This is not what I wanted to see, but it’s necessary right now. Classes will be large no matter what. But we still need to teach kids. This is not the kids’ fault. We cannot, because of a lack of (state) funding, stop education. We can’t. We won’t.”

Grimsley’s comments came after Bethel teachers voted 165-18 Monday afternoon to ratify an agreement to once again accept concessions in the face of a severe budget shortfall — $6.45 million — similar to what other public school districts are facing across the state and nation.

The Bethel School Board voted 5-0 Monday night, with board members Greg Nelson and Alan Laisure absent, to approve the deal with all four of the district’s employee groups. Classified workers voted 109-8 Monday to ratify the agreement; and the district’s administrators and other nonunion-represented employees approved the concessions unanimously.

“Thank you to all the employee groups,” longtime board member Wayne Watkins said after the board’s vote. “It’s a very commendable act for them, and I appreciate it.”

Last year, Bethel employees agreed to $2.1 million in concessions, and they agreed to $872,000 for the 2009-10 school year. The result of Monday’s agreement will be employee concessions for 2011-12 of between $1.5 million and $2.7 million — depending on whether city voters approve the income tax measure for schools.

The concessions are equal to 20 to 37 teaching jobs being saved, according to Bethel school officials.

The agreement calls for employees to take a 3.5 percent to 6 percent wage decrease — mostly the result of losing up to three instructional days and an additional two noninstructional teacher work days — if the school income tax passes on May 17; and an 11 percent wage decrease — the result of maintaining the same level of 10 unpaid furlough days as this school year — if the tax fails. The decreases are predicated on what employees would be making at the start of the 2011-12 school year if no contractual concessions had been made.

However, under the agreements, teachers and administrators also will see a slight drop of about 1 percent in their actual hourly pay, Superintendent Colt Gill said.

Gill said the deal could keep the district from having to lay off any staff in 2011-12. But even with the employee concessions, the district will need to find a way to cut another $1 million to $1.6 million — the final amount dependent on the fate of the income tax for schools — to balance its budget, Gill said.

The district will first look to see if there are any additional savings from the current school year, then look at the cost of materials and supplies, then attrition in the form of staff retirements and resignations, before resorting to layoffs, Gill said.

The current contracts with the district’s two unions, representing teachers and classified employees, do not allow for any “re-openers” to bargain later. Thus, the only way the district could affirm Monday’s concessions was for those employee groups to agree to the memorandum of agreements, or MOAs, on top of their existing contracts, Gill said.

In addition, all employee groups agreed to an increase in out-of-pocket health insurance costs, and professional development funds for administrators and teachers were reduced, Gill said.

The city income tax would provide an estimated $12 million for the Eugene School District and an estimated $4.8 million for the Bethel School District — to be used to minimize teacher layoffs and thus keep class sizes from increasing, and/or to keep from cutting as many instructional school days as possible.

In what the Bethel district is calling an unprecedented step, Monday’s agreements were possible because representatives of all employee groups have been meeting at 6:30 a.m. every Wednesday since January with Gill to hammer out a compromise. Although Gill does not negotiate contracts, he has taken the lead in seeking concessions the past three years, school officials said.