District, teachers not close to a deal

If Wednesday’s opening bargaining session between the Eugene School District and the Eugene Education Association is any indication, it could be a while before the district and its teachers find consensus on another round of salary and benefit concessions, as they’ve done the past two years.

During an often-heated opening 90 minutes at the district’s Education Center, union bargaining team members expressed shock and disbelief at the district’s opening proposal, which includes reducing salaries by 2.6 percent, taking away all five of teachers’ paid holidays and freezing “step” increases based on experience at half the usual 3.7 percent increase.

After a 75-minute caucus, the union countered with a request for a 0.6 percent pay raise, a full step increase starting in February, and a 185-day school year the same as this year. The session ended at 9:45 p.m., almost four hours after it began, with no resolution.

Before offering their counterproposal, some EEA bargaining team members voiced outrage that the district would once again ask teachers to shoulder more cuts in light of this week’s news that incoming Superintendent Sheldon Berman has been offered a $180,000 annual salary that also includes annual 5 percent raises through six years.

“To be asked to do this at the same time is pretty unbelievable,” said EEA bargaining team member Merri Steele, a retired teacher and past EEA co-president, while seated at the bargaining table.

Teachers and other district employees have agreed to concessions in the past two school years, in the form of seven unpaid furlough days that shortened the school year and resulted in less pay for them. But the school district is facing a record budget shortfall for 2011-12, and its fourth straight year of deficits, and is trying to create a “sustainable budget” for the future.

Since February, the district has placed the estimated budget shortfall at $24 million, but announced Wednesday that it appears that it will be closer to $21.7 million, based on the Oregon Senate’s passage of a bill granting $5.7 billion in state K-12 funding. (The $24 million estimate had been based on Gov. John Kitzhaber’s initial proposal in January of $5.56 billion.)

The Eugene School Board voted Feb. 2 to follow Superintendent George Russell’s cost-saving recommendations for 2011-12, which include closing four elementary schools at the end of the year; increasing the student-to-teacher ratio by a base of four at each school by laying off 109 teachers; using up to $5 million in reserve funds; cutting administrative and classified staff by 10 percent; and seeking between $5.5 million and $10 million in employee concessions.

In making its opening offer Wednesday, the district’s negotiating team said its goal, in asking for employee concessions from teachers, classified staff and administrators, is to find savings of $7 million.

But it wasn’t so much that number, but the way the district proposed to get there, that irked EEA bargaining team members. Teachers have accepted pay freezes in recent years and agreed to fewer school days, but the district has rarely if ever asked them to take pay cuts in the form of salary reductions.

During a PowerPoint presentation, the district’s lead negotiator, Associate Human Resources Director Christine Nesbit, offered an example of what a teacher’s salary would look like under the district’s scenario.

A teacher at Step 4 in the district’s salary schedule making $42,907 this year would earn $42,242 in 2011-12 — despite moving up a half-step on July 1, because of the 2.6 percent salary reduction and unpaid holidays.

In 2012-13, that teacher would earn a full new step and, based on a 192-day work year, would earn $44,159.

Nesbit said that if the district does not get a partial step freeze for teachers in 2011-12, it will cost the district $2.2 million.

The district issued tentative layoff notices to 109 teachers in February, based on the school board’s mandate that it increase the student-to-teacher ratio by a base of four.

But the district’s proposal actually would allow the ratio to increase by just 1.75 students per school on average, Nesbit said.

That would result in the equivalent of 50 full-time teachers, 36 full-time classified staff and 5.4 administrators being laid off.

“I’m sure nobody in this room finds this desirable,” said Randy Bernstein, district bargaining team member and South Eugene High School principal. “We’re living in a pretty bad recession right now. This is a proposal that’s geared toward a lot of reality.”