At left, Patrick Slagle, Jamestown Board of Education vice president, and Superintendent Tim Mains thanked the Jamestown Teachers Association for their hard work during contract negotiations, which lasted more than two years. The board unanimously approved a new contract for the teachers Thursday night.
After more than two years of negotiations, the Jamestown Teachers Association has a new contract in place.
On Thursday night, the Jamestown Board of Education met to approve the new four-year agreement, effective immediately. The contract will last through June 2018.
The teachers association ratified the contract Wednesday, according to Chris Reilly, Jamestown Teachers Association president. The board of education unanimously approved the contract at Thursday night’s meeting.
“Like Tim (Mains) said, it is a fair agreement and it’s been a long time coming,” Reilly said. “We certainly wish we could’ve resolved it sooner rather than later, but in the end (it) recognizes the work of the teachers. It isn’t an easy job to teach in Jamestown in 2016, and so I think it’s a fair agreement all the way around.”
He said the approved contract is a relief. Reilly added that it is “almost expected now” to go a year or two without a contract, but after the second year it is a little more worrisome.
“That’s when people really start to get anxious about it, so we’d reached that part so it was fortunate that we were able to resolved it when we were,” he said.
The contract isn’t vastly different from the previous contract, Reilly said. He said the teachers association believed the contract was good going into the process, but there were enhancements that were agreed upon that made it a little bit better.
Now that the contract is approved, Reilly said there will be a break of about 13 months in negotiations before the process begins again.
“We start negotiating in January of the year it expires,” Reilly said with a laugh. “It’s a little bit of a reprieve, and it feels good. We’re happy about it and we’re relieved, but we know there’s going to be work still down the road.”
Superintendent Tim Mains said he is thankful for all the hardwork everyone put into the contract negotiation process.
“We’ve been at this for two years plus,” Mains said.
While the contract isn’t drastically different from the previous contract, there are a few changes, he said. In the contract, there were rewards for longevity which were improved slightly.
“If you worked for 20, 25, or 30 years, there was an extra reward you get on top of your salary, so those amounts were increased slightly,” Mains said. “The old contract had 22 steps, and ended at $82,000. The new contract has 23 steps and ends at $85,000. So, we basically raised that final salary in the last step. We had an attendance incentive that members can earn when they retire. When they retire based on the number of unused sick days they have, they can get an attendance award based on the more days you have, the more money you get.”
The change came in in the amount of days required before a reward was earned, dropping from 75 days to 50 days. He said the award encourages improved attendance due to the award at retirement.
“There were small changes like that that we believed helped monetarily show to the teachers our value in their service,” Mains said. “Basically, the salary schedules that we’ve had for some time stays pretty much the same. There were lanes in the salary schedule that every six hours of graduate credit you got, you moved over a column to a new lane. We simplified the schedule by taking out every other column, so instead of moving every six hours, you had to accumulate 12 hours before you moved. That really didn’t change what people get, it just says it’s going to take you longer to get it.”
He said he wanted to extend thanks to Reilly for his leadership. He also thanked the teachers for their dedication to the students and their hardwork throughout the process.
“When things got stuck and I approached him and said, ‘Hey, let’s you and I work on this because I believe we can find a solution,’ he was a willing partner in that effort,” Mains said.
“He and I continued to meet one-on-one from last April through this October, back and forth and back and forth.”
“We’d give a proposal, sometimes they’d come back with a proposal, and we’d take it to our prospective sides and one side or the other would say, ‘Nah, that’s not it,'” Mains said. “But, there was a persistence on his part and a determination on his part just as there was on mine to find a solution that both sides could agree to.”
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