Salary increases for Juneau School District teachers over the next three years will likely will not keep up with rates of inflation, according to the district’s finance director David Means.
The new contract calls for an increase to salaries of 0.5 percent in the first year, 1 percent in the second year and 0.5 percent in the third year.
“Recent trends of costs and inflation have been higher than those numbers, so most likely they’re not keeping up with inflation,” Means said in an interview following Tuesday night’s school board meeting when the Juneau School Board ratified the contract between the Juneau School District and the Juneau Education Association.
Board member Sean O’Brien said he appreciates union membership agreeing to the slight salary increases given tight fiscal times.
“We live in a community that’s really expensive to live. We know the housing is expensive and costs aren’t going down. This is really a huge statement, a sacrifice in a way and acknowledgement all at the same time. The union members recognize the situation that we’re in and I’m sure, to some degree, it’s a painstaking process to have to settle on an amount that they’d certainly would like to be higher, but to respond and do this in this environment where it’s really tough, I just think it’s remarkable,” O’Brien said.
JEA is the district’s largest employee association, representing about 355 teachers and certified staff. Members from JEA and district management began negotiating for a new contract in February. The current one-year contract, which gave teachers a 2 percent salary increase, expires June 30 and the new three-year contract would be in effect July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2019.
Patrick Roach, spokesman for the JEA negotiation team, said he’s less concerned about keeping up with inflation and more concerned about rising health care costs.
He said the contract “was a difficult pill to swallow” considering “skyrocketing” health care costs.
“We’re looking at a pretty large increase to health care costs, so for a lot of teachers, this is going to be a net loss. They’re going to be losing money this year,” Roach said in a phone interview in late May after JEA membership ratified the contract.
Roach called the contract process depressing, but he said the teachers accepted the reality of the state’s unstable financial situation when voting for a three-year contract.
“We looked around the state, we looked at what other unions were getting in their multiyear contracts, we looked at the $4 billion deficit and we’ve been bargaining every year for several years now, so we thought it would be good to have a little stability to let both the teachers and the district plan for the future,” he said.
The cost of the salary increases to the district is estimated to be an additional $175,000 in Fiscal Year 2017, $425,000 in FY 2018 and $568,000 in FY 2019, according to the district.
Board member Josh Keaton said the three-year contract helps a lot for future budget planning cycles.
“We know what that number’s going to be. It makes our job easier,” he said.
Means said the last time the school board has been able to approve a three-year contract was in 2009.
JEA president-elect Laura Mulgrew said at the meeting having the multiyear contract in place allows the teachers to focus on what they want to do — teach.
“Our members did acknowledge the current financial situation, and I think this does speak volumes to our commitment to Juneau, to the financial situation in the education of children and where we stand professionals,” Mulgrew said.
Director of Human Resources Ted Van Bronkhorst said a lingering issue that a negotiation team committee will continue to look at is the apparent inequity related to teacher preparation time.
Middle school teachers have the most prep time with 450 minutes a week, high school teachers get 250 minutes and elementary teachers get 180 minutes per week.
“We see there is this disparity between the amount of time teachers have for class preparation and there’s potentially a savings in time for the district if we could bring that closer together,” Van Bronkhorst said.
Two down, one to go
The school board also approved a new three-year contract between the district and the Juneau Education Support Staff, which is effective July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2019. It succeeds the current two-year contract set to expire on June 30.
The new contract calls for increases to salary of 0.75 percent plus an additional $0.20 per hour in the first year, 0.80 percent and an additional $0.20 per hour in the second year, and 1 percent plus an additional $0.20 per hour in the third year. It also includes increases to monthly health insurance contributions.
“The percentage favors the employees at the top end of the scale and the flat increase favors employees at the low end,” Van Bronkhorst said.
JESS represents 295 of the district’s 672 staff members. The employee association includes office and instructional support staff, school nurses, RALLY employees, maintenance and custodial personnel.
Due to reductions to health insurance waivers, the district is actually saving $39,000 in the first year of the new contract, will spend an additional $114,000 in FY 2018 and an additional $326,000 in the FY 2019.
The district and it’s third union, the Juneau School Administrative Association, have reached a tentative agreement and union membership ratified it Monday night.
The current contract expires June 30, 2016. With about 20 members, the JSAA bargaining unit represents principals, assistant principals and district-level coordinators and specialists.
The tentative agreement is also for a three-year contract.
“To get three of our unions on three-year contracts, I’m very pleased,” Van Bronkhorst said.
The JSAA contract is the last one the school board needs to approve. That’s on the special June 22 meeting agenda.
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
In this file photo taken June 14, 2016, the Juneau School Board approves contracts with the teachers and support staff unions at a regular meeting.
