The Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. has approved a 2020-2021 collective bargaining agreement with its teachers’ association.
The Columbus Educators Association voted on the agreement on Oct. 19 and 20, with 347 members (about 96%) voting in favor of the agreement and 16 (about 4%) voting against.
The BCSC school board approved the agreement at a special meeting on Oct. 23. The board also approved a 5% increase in health plan premiums, as well as 2% increases for support staff and administrators for the 2021 calendar year.
CEA president Amy London said that the collective bargaining agreement impacts all 720 of BCSC’s teacher positions, though she noted that not all of these positions are necessarily filled.
Under the agreement, BCSC teachers will see an average salary increase of 2% through their regular increase. Experienced teachers will see pay increases of $5,000 to $15,000 to be funded through the referendum approved last spring.
Chad Phillips, assistant superintendent of financial services, said that the referendum increase is “representative of about a 12% increase for teaching across our district.”
Superintendent Jim Roberts said, “We should celebrate the fact this community rallied, even in difficult times, to support that referendum.”
London likewise expressed gratitude to voters for approving the referendum, saying that it provides “new teachers something to look forward to,” and that it should help improve teacher retention.
For regular salary increases, the agreement states that returning teachers will move up a salary step — there is a difference of $1,200 between most steps on the salary schedule.
Under the agreement, teacher referendum increases are based on years of experience (at the beginning of the school year), with each year of BCSC experience counting for one point and each year of outside experience counting for a third of a point.
“We want to reward teachers that come to us from outside of the district, but our kids and our community didn’t benefit from the years that they were teaching somewhere else,” Phillips said at Monday’s board meeting.
London said of the point system, “I’m very happy that we’re able to give folks points for their experience outside of BCSC. I do wish it could be more. I wish we could’ve given them a year for every year they had outside of BCSC. But at the same time, I understand that that’s a bargaining issue. … The one for every three years is where we settled, and I’m okay with that, based on all the other things that we got in our contract.”
The referendum increase levels are as follows:
5-9.9 points: $5,000 increase
10-14.9 points: $10,000 increase
15+ points: $15,000 increase
Phillips clarified that each qualifying teacher will receive half of their salary increase level paid out from Jan. 1 through Aug. 13 ($2,500 for the first level and so on).
“Then starting on that first pay in the next contract year, it’s the whole $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000,” he said.
Referendum and base pay increases are not to exceed the maximum salary, which is $85,000, according to the agreement. All teachers who do not receive a referendum experience increase will receive a stipend in January. The amount will be determined by the number of teachers who qualify and will not exceed $500. Phillips said that $130,000 has been set aside for these stipends.
The board also approved a referendum increase of $2 per hour for bus drivers and $1 per hour for other support staff, starting Jan. 1. This is an addition to a two percent increase to the pay matrix for support staff.
While the referendum’s tax increase won’t take effect until May 2021, school officials have said in the past that the board plans to issue a tax anticipation warrant in January, which will allow the board to start spending funds and enact pay increases for teachers prior to collection of that tax revenue.
“The salary increases and retroactive pay for teachers should occur on the November 20 paycheck,” Phillips said. “And then referendum increases and associated stipends would go into effect on Jan. 1.”
He added that the board approved setting aside $250,000 to pay stipends to teacher who have had to serve students across multiple platforms and said that the school corporation anticipates paying those stipends in February.
London said that she was pleased with the final agreement, as well as with CEA voter turnout — 363 or 75% of the association’s 484 members voted electronically on the agreement. Out of this number, 347 (96%) voted in favor to approve the contract.
The percentage of members who voted in favor of the agreement is noticeably higher than in recent years. For the 2017-2019 contract, 90% of respondents voted to approve the agreement. For the 2019-2020 contract, 79% voted in favor.
London said that reasons for the wider margin of support included the referendum funding and the fact that teachers will receive a larger portion of state funding this year. She added that while there is an increase in insurance costs, most teachers’ raises are significant enough that they will not be swallowed up by these costs, as was sometimes the case in previous years.
However, there are still some changes that CEA teachers would like to see in the future.
“We survey our members, and that’s what drives our bargaining team,” London explained. She said that members’ requests include:
Compensation for meetings that occur outside of contract time
More specific leave times for pregnancy (for both mothers and their partners)
A salary schedule with fewer steps
The current salary schedule for BCSC teachers has 32 steps, and London added that teachers don’t necessarily go up a step each year; that has to be negotiated as part of the salary contract. She said it would be good to have fewer steps so that it doesn’t take as long for teachers to reach the top step or to get to a level where they see “an increase that makes an impact.”
London added that the bargaining team is glad that there was flexibility regarding meetings and that they were able to meet virtually.
“In the time of COVID, with all of the other challenges that we had going on, I feel like everybody in both teams did a nice job of accommodating everyone’s needs so that we could get that done,” she said.
