Juneau’s teachers union voted earlier this week in favor of approving a tentative contract agreement with the Juneau School District. Now, it’s the school board’s turn to decide whether to approve the contract before it’s implemented.
The majority vote comes after more than a year of strained contract negotiations between the district and Juneau Education Association, the district’s largest employee union.
Kelley Harvey is a teacher at Auke Bay Elementary School and co-chair of JEA’s negotiation support team. In an interview on Wednesday, she said it was a clear-cut vote.
“People were really just done. And I think it comes down to all the testimony that you could hear at any of the board meetings, or you could see on our signs,” she said. “Teachers were taking home significantly less pay this year, working under the old contract.”
Teachers have been working under a contract that expired last summer. The ongoing disagreements over wages and health insurance contributions escalated the negotiation process. Last month, the union voted to authorize a strike. It didn’t reach that point, and the district’s and union’s bargaining teams reached a tentative agreement shortly after.
The two-year agreement covers the current school year and the next. If approved by the school board, the tentative agreement would increase wages and the district’s contributions to health insurance and would be retroactive.
Some of its highlights include a 3% increase overall this year, to be spread out differently among members. She said that’s to realign the member’s salary steps moving forward. After that, all members will get a 6.25% increase in the salary schedule next year.
The district’s monthly contributions to employees’ health premiums would increase by $50 in the first contract year, and then another $40 in the second. It does not change the time for teachers to prepare lessons and grade assignments.
Those agreements are different from what the district or the union each initially proposed. But Harvey said having a contact in place will provide some much-needed relief for many teachers in Juneau.
“We had to become competitive with the rest of the state, and we were not competitive with the salary schedule we had,” she said. “So we’re bringing it more into alignment. It’s not the best, but it’s better.”
The next step is for the Juneau school board to introduce the agreement during a special meeting on Thursday. Then, board members are slated to take a final vote at a meeting on April 14.
