District 131 Board of Education and East Aurora Council, IFT/AFT Local 604 fail to reach agreementDistrict 131 Board of Education and East Aurora Council, IFT/AFT Local 604 fail to reach agreement

As of August 9, the District 131 Board of Education and the East Aurora Council, IFT/AFT Local 604 have failed to reach an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement. The district made its last, best, and final offer on June 28, which, after further negotiations and federal mediation, has not been accepted by the Union and has not been scheduled for a vote by the Union membership. This action has resulted in an impasse regarding the current collective bargaining agreement. Accordingly, the district has filed its Notice to Initiate the Posting Process with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB).

Within seven days of the Notice, each party must submit its most recent offer and a cost summary to each other, to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, and to the federal mediator with whom the parties have been meeting. If there is still no agreement after an additional seven days, the offers are required to be posted on the IELRB website, the district’s website, and delivered to the media. The district’s offer, showing the proposed salaries to be paid teachers based upon their years of service and advanced degrees, and to individual support and office staff over the next three years, is available in pdf format below.

Negotiations for a new contract, covering the district’s teachers, support staff, and office staff, began in February, 2018. While the district and the Union Negotiating Committee reached tentative agreement on many sections, no final agreement has been reached on the economic sections, and the Union committee has stated it will not support the district’s final offer. The parties began mediation with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on July 5.

The district’s goal is to implement salaries competitive with other similar neighboring districts, while protecting the financial condition of the district and addressing the needs of taxpayers residing in the district. Under the state’s new Evidence Based Funding formula, the district received additional funds this year. In addition to substantial draws on other district funds, the district has committed those funds to a salary schedule for its employees that meets or exceeds salaries paid by neighboring districts, including all districts serving the City of Aurora, and to addressing building safety issues. Despite the fact that the district has projected a loss for the current fiscal year, it has committed substantial projected revenues from all sources over the next three years to the salary packages for its employees. Although the Board considered closing the gap at a more gradual rate, it determined that it was far more equitable to accelerate the changes by making significant increases in the pay scale over the next two years. In most cases, this results in percentage annual increases that are far beyond the rates that would apply in almost all other labor agreements. The proposed salary schedule contains increases in salaries for bachelor’s degree level teachers that meet and, in most cases, exceed the salaries of comparable neighboring districts.  For teachers working toward or achieving a masters or higher level degrees, the district’s current proposal provides significant pay increases which close what was previously a considerable gap between salaries paid by the district and salaries paid by neighboring districts, including all districts serving Aurora. The district believes this will assist in a reduction of teacher turnover resulting from teachers seeking higher salaries elsewhere.

Despite compensation levels that currently exceed amounts paid to educational support personnel in all neighboring districts, the district has also agreed to the creation of a graduated salary schedule that guarantees a raise to every member of the support and office staff.

In addition, the district has maintained an extremely comprehensive health insurance plan, which has been kept largely intact even though the district experienced significant increases in insurance costs. The average district contribution for each employee for health insurance is in excess of $11,000.00, which is in addition to that employee’s salary.

To implement its proposal, the district’s current salary spending will be significantly increased over the next three years. To fund this commitment, the Board of Education has sought innovative methods of paying for critical capital improvements, is taking advantage of significant energy savings and rebates by retrofitting fixtures throughout the district with low-energy consuming devices, and is doing everything it can to hold the line on insurance costs.

“We can make this commitment to our teachers and support staff without increasing tax burdens on our residents,” Board President Annette Johnson said. “Our efforts to make salaries commensurate with other districts in the area have, in the past, been in very small increments. By committing to substantial increases in compensation in order to close the gap now, we believe that we can address any instability in our faculty due to the lure of higher salaries available elsewhere which, in the long run, becomes very costly. We also believe the commitment to close the gap is justified because it encourages and rewards professional development and longevity, and recognizes that our teachers have, for many years, been working for significantly less than their peers in neighboring districts. We are also aware that state funding will be tied to improved student performance, which will be difficult to achieve with high staff turnover.”

Johnson added: “We respect the professionalism of our educators and did not want to withhold any resources that we could reasonably commit to a fair agreement by making incremental offers and hoping the teachers might accept less. Instead, we, in good faith, evaluated each step in the pay scale to determine its competitive value in a way that fulfills our responsibilities to treat our most valuable resource fairly while at the same time holding the line on the tax burdens of the citizens who will be paying for that resource. Consequently, we made our accelerated proposal prior to the Union requesting it.”

“Declaring an impasse only means that the bargaining committee representing the Union and the representatives of the Board of Education could not agree on the contract. The district’s proposal has not been submitted to Union membership for approval.” Johnson explained. “We trust when it comes time to vote on the agreement our educators will recognize that the increases they all will be receiving are fair and equitable and will come at a cost to the district that will far exceed that currently paid in salaries for our teachers and the very valuable staff that supports them.”

District 131’s superintendent of schools, Dr. Jennifer Norrell, who joined the district on July 1, said:

“It has not taken me long to recognize the impressive level of dedication, professionalism and enthusiasm that drives our educators, or to understand the depth of the board of education’s determination to support them within the limits of the burdens that our taxpayers can be expected to bare. With these two factors working in our favor, we can achieve great things for our students. We face a lot of challenges, but I have not found anywhere even a trace of unwillingness to address them. I can only hope that we can hit the ground running when the bell rings bright and early on the first day of school.”

“We have a limited time to influence the educational progress of our students,” Norrell added. “To maximize that influence, it is critical that administrators, faculty, and support staff move forward with the determination to formulate a single, detailed, comprehensive plan of action and to assemble a single team of professionals to implement it. Consequently, our motto is ‘One Team, One Plan’ and I can’t find any obstacles in the way of living out its meaning. I am anxious to see the amazing results that our team is capable of delivering and can’t wait to get started. I think the faculty and the support staff are equally anxious to see what we can achieve in the 2018-2019 school year, and hope that when the proposed agreement is presented to them, they will agree that the Board has done everything it can to place them in an equitable position.”

Teacher salary schedule

Step change examples for teachers

Support and office staff schedule