Bargaining Update: Initial Economic Proposal

USEP and District instructional bargaining teams met again last night and the Union passed our initial “Economic Proposal” . The USEP proposal incorporated components, now required by state law (Senate Bill 736), that requires teachers on Annual Contracts to be compensated on a performance pay basis and allows for teachers with Professional Service (PSC) or Continuing Contracts (CC) to relinquish those contracts and move to Annual Contracts (AC), if they choose, to enable them to potentially receive a larger salary adjustment.

The specifics of USEP’s proposal calls for a 5% total increase to be distributed in 2 ways:

• 2.5% Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) increase to all teachers.
• an additional 2.5% increase for teachers on the Grandfathered schedule (PSC/CC’s) and Annual Contract teachers on the Performance Pay schedule.

The Union is also seeking to provide a salary adjustment to newer teachers on Annual Contract with less than 3 years of experience who received a “Beginning/Developing” rating during the 2012-2013 school year though state law is silent on this group.

“Our reason for including ‘Beginning/Developing’ is that newer teachers on Annual Contract who don’t have the classroom experience should not be punished for being rated exactly where they should be on the Marzano evaluation scale and which was never meant to be a means for providing performance pay measures,” said USEP President Kenny Blankenship.

The teams are scheduled to meet again next Thursday, October 9th to continue negotiations and attempt to resolve all remaining issues and salary increases soon.