Springfield teachers, staff agree to freezes

SPRINGFIELD — All three Springfield School District employee groups agreed to salary freezes and other concessions Monday to help the district balance its 2011-12 budget. The agreements represent about $3.1 million worth of savings to the district, which is facing an $8.3 million budget shortfall for next school year.

The agreements will result in a 2011-12 school year two days longer than this school year, district officials said Tuesday. While teachers are working under a one-year, 186-day contract this year, with student instructional days numbering 166, both those numbers will increase by two — to 188 and 168, respectively — for 2011-12, Human Resources Director Dawn Strong said.

After taking seven unpaid furlough days this school year, teachers agreed Monday to take only five furlough days in 2011-12. Three of the five furlough days will be instructional classroom days.

“We’re really excited to see that we can do this with five furlough days,” she said.

Given the projected school year in other districts, 188 looks pretty good, Strong said. Teachers in the Bethel School District in west Eugene are working a 182-day year this year, and looking to do the same next year if voters next week reject a city of Eugene income tax for schools; in the Eugene School District, the Eugene Education Association is currently advocating a 182-day work year while the district is proposing a 186-day calendar.

About 600 teachers represented by the Springfield Education Association voted strongly in favor Monday of taking concessions in the form of furlough days for the third straight year, said Judy Svoboda, association president. She would not reveal an actual vote count.

Along with the district’s classified employees, as well as administrators who are not represented by a union, all of the district’s 1,387 employees agreed to give up annual salary step increases based on experience; to give up any cost-of-living adjustments; to keep the district’s monthly health insurance contributions at $990; and to suspend professional development funds usually made available to employees as part of existing contracts.

Administrators also agreed to across-the-board 2 percent salary reductions.

“It’s hard to say we are excited, but all of our employee groups feel proud about it and we think it’s something that’s pretty atypical,” said Strong, who attributed the agreements to the district’s transparency with its employee groups, as well as a collaborative process years in the making.

The agreements are the “result of more than just hard work this year,” school board Chairman Garry Weber said. “It really was born many years ago.”

The district, the school board and employee groups have “genuine consideration for each other,” Weber said. Before Superintendent Nancy Golden arrived eight years ago and began to set a tone that changed the culture, there was a “deficit of trust,” Weber said. Now, the priority is on keeping kids in school as many days as possible, he said.

Bargaining teams for the district and SEA first met last month, Svoboda said. The sides then met in back-to-back all-day sessions last Wednesday and Thursday to reach the proposal that teachers voted in favor of Monday, she said.

The past two years, the district has brought in University of Oregon law professor Michael Moffitt to serve as a mediator. Instead of using traditional collective bargaining, in which both sides exchange proposals and then caucus before presenting counter proposals, a less adversarial collaborative bargaining approach led by Moffitt has been used in Springfield, Svoboda said.

“I really feel this process works for us,” she said.

Last month, the Bethel School District was able to reach concession agreements for 2011-12 with its four employee groups using a similar process, with Superintendent Colt Gill meeting weekly for months will all employee groups. The Eugene School District and its employee groups are continuing to bargain over the issue of concessions.

The Springfield district is still looking at laying off staff this month or next to balance the 2011-12 budget, spokesman Jeff DeFranco said. But the concessions will mean fewer cuts than initially feared, he said.

The district expects to lose about 70 to 80 employees through layoffs, retirements and resignations, Strong said. Last month, 34 teachers received tentative layoff notices, but if layoffs were made official today, the number of teachers let go would be 21, Strong said. If more teachers decide to retire at the end of this year, that number could be reduced, she said.

In addition to the $3.1 million in savings from employee concessions, the other $5.2 million needed to plug the shortfall will come from closing four schools at the end of this school year, layoffs, central office reductions, and other cost savings, DeFranco said.

“Was it painful?” Svoboda said. “Yes, it’s very painful to ask employees to have increased workloads and fewer work days. But the reality is there’s not any money.”