Mediation continued through the weekend as the Kent School District and the Kent Education Association worked to solve their contract dispute in time to prevent union membership from taking a strike vote Wednesday evening.
A mediator from the Washington State Public Employment Relations Commission began meeting with both sides Aug. 19 after the district on Aug. 14 declared an impasse in negotiations.
The two entities, led by the mediator, continued their negotiations Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
School is scheduled to begin Aug. 31. The KEA has a membership meeting scheduled for Wednesday, at which time a strike vote will be taken if the two sides have not agreed on a contract.
Both sides have said they hope it does not come to that.
According to the district, several tentative agreements have been reached between the two sides as a result of mediation, which is taking place at Mill Creek Middle School in Kent.
“It’s clear we’ve made progress with the mediator,” said District Communications Director Becky Hanks.
According to a document provided by the district, the sides have reached tentative agreements on 12 KEA proposals and one KSD proposal. These include the district providing moving supplies for teachers switching classrooms or schools, substitute teacher pay, additional days’ pay if a teacher moves classrooms during the summer break, increased pay for specialists and allowing teachers to take time off to attend the union convention, among others.
According to the document, there are still 32 KEA proposals on the table and five from KSD. In addition, the union has withdrawn seven of its proposals and the district has withdrawn nine of its own.
Among the issues still to be discussed is teacher pay. Though the union insists pay is not its most primary issue, Kent’s ranking among the lowest-paying districts in the region has been a point of contention with the union for the past several months.
The district in July put forth a proposal that it said would increase overall teacher pay by approximately 3 percent in the first year and 1.5 percent in the second of a two-year contract. Along with the pay increase, the district proposed also included one extra day of teacher-directed time as well as an additional day of district-directed time. The offer, however, was a take-it-or-leave one from the district.
The union Aug. 14 rejected the district’s proposal. It countered with a proposal of its own, calling for increasing overall salaries 6 percent in the first year and 4 percent in the second. The union proposal also seeks to replace two district-directed days with teacher-directed days.
Earlier this summer, union officials estimated the average teacher pay in the Kent School District to be $54,000 for the 182-day contract period.
The union contends on its blog and Web site that its other major issues of “time” and “workload” continue to be ignored by the district.
The district has said in the past that its proposal included maintaining class sizes at their current level. The union has countered with a proposal to lower class sizes, which includes punitive damages of $25 per student per day that any class is over the reduced size as well as several it said would cost the district nothing, including shifts in scheduling and/or in school boundaries.
According to the district, the union brought a new class-size proposal to negotiations Aug. 21. The district claims the proposal would cost more than $32 million.
The two sides also have not reached an agreement over the number of meetings that teachers must attend during the week. The union contends a glut of meetings take place during the 7.5-hour contract day that extends from 30 minutes before students arrive until 30 minutes after they leave are taking away time that teachers could spend helping students. A video on union’s Web site, www.kentschools.org, states that at some schools, teachers must attend up to three meetings a week. It is seeking a contractual limit on the number of mandatory meetings for teachers.
Both sides have repeatedly stated their hope that a settlement will be reached before Wednesday’s meeting.
“The board and the superintendent are continuing a firm commitment to being fair, transparent and fiscally responsible as we work with KEA toward resolution,” said Hanks. “It is our hope the teachers will chose not to strike.”
Officials from the KEA did not return calls before deadline for this story.
For more information about the negotiations and the differences between the two sides, visit www.kentschools.org (KEA site) or Kent School District’s budget renegotiation site.
An updated list of tentative agreements and proposals still on the table, provided by the district:
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