Teachers, district still far apart on concessions

The Eugene School District softened its offer Thursday to teachers during the second bargaining session in eight days on salary and benefit concessions for the 2011-12 school year. However, the proposal still includes cutting salaries and taking away paid holidays, and that is clearly still something members of the Eugene Education Association bargaining team don’t want to accept after already agreeing to concessions the past two years.

“The (five paid) holidays were bargained, like, a million years ago,” Tom Di Liberto, a Monroe Middle School teacher and the EEA’s bargaining chairman, said during the meeting at the district’s Education Center. “It just hurts to even think about the idea that we’d be going backward.”

Di Liberto’s comment came after the district’s associate human resources director and lead negotiator, Christine Nesbit, said the district’s latest proposal would eliminate two paid holidays for teachers instead of all five. The new offer would also cut teacher salaries by 1.9 percent for 2011-12, instead of last week’s original proposal of 2.6 percent.

The district and teachers appeared to come close to agreement on reducing by six the number of contract days in 2011-12, from the 192 days currently proposed in the contract to 186 days. That’s similar to concessions that this year reduced the number of contract days to 185.

But the two sides remain far apart on how to get to the smaller number of contract days: The district proposes a combination of fewer paid holidays, fewer teacher planning days and the use of two hazardous weather days as unpaid furlough days. The union proposes getting there by eliminating one teacher planning day and five instructional classroom days.

The district’s latest offer keeps three items from its original offer: freezing the current annual salary “step” increases based on longevity at the current half-step level of 1.85 percent instead of 3.7 percent; eliminating payments to the Public Employees Retirement System on district tax-sheltered annuities; and maintaining health insurance contributions at the current $1,100 per month rate.

After about a one-hour caucus, the union — which is in the first year of a three-year contract signed last June — offered a counterproposal. It contained the same items that the teachers sought last week: a 0.6 percent salary increase as of July 1; the restoration of full “step” increases beginning Feb. 1, 2012; and an increase in the monthly health insurance contribution to $1,160.

Before the groups broke to caucus, Nesbit said the financially struggling district, which is looking at a record $21.7 million shortfall next year, cannot afford to compromise on its position of keeping step increases at the current half-step level, because of the “ongoing” costs that full step increases would create in future years.

Accepting the union’s counteroffer would increase the district’s ongoing costs by 2.7 percent, she said. If the district accepted the union’s counteroffer, and if classified and administrative employees were granted the same, the district would then see a cost savings in 2011-12 of only $1.8 million, Nesbit said. But district officials have said they need $7 million in concessions from its employee groups to balance the budget.

The other strategies for closing the budget gap include using up to $5 million in reserve funds, closing four elementary schools at the end of this school year, and laying off up to 190 full-time employees.

The district issued tentative layoff notices to 109 teachers in late February, and expects to lay off about 10 percent of its classified and administrative employees.

The 109 teacher layoffs were based on cutting the equivalent of 84 full-time positions, which was based on increasing the student-to-teacher ratio at each school by four students. That number, however, was based on an expected budget shortfall of $24 million. District officials said at Thursday’s bargaining session that the new staffing mandate for school principals is a ratio increase of three students per teacher, based on the new budget shortfall estimate of $21.7 million. The figure was lowered when the state recently announced K-12 funding of $5.7 billion for the 2011-13 biennium, instead of the $5.56 billion estimated by Gov. John Kitzhaber in January.

If the union were to accept the district’s latest offer, the student-to-teacher ratio would increase by fewer than three students at each school, Nesbit said, and result in fewer teachers being laid off at the end of the school year.

EEA bargaining members again mentioned their unhappiness with the district’s $180,000 salary offer to incoming Superintendent Sheldon Berman — $36,000 more than what current Superintendent George Russell earns.

“That one really hurt and continues to sting,” Di Liberto said.

The district has known since October that it would have to offer more money to secure the caliber of superintendent it wanted, Nesbit said. She also said Russell has long been underpaid.

“We believe we are now in market,” she said. “And we believe Dr. Berman, who is a world-class superintendent, is going to be paid what he would have (been paid) if he’d gone to Beaverton or another district.”

Berman was reportedly a candidate for the Beaverton School District, but was not one of its five finalists.