Crystal Lake Elementary District 47 to vote on new teacher deal

After seven months of negotiations, the Crystal Lake Elementary District 47 school board is poised to approve a new contract with its teachers.

A large majority of teachers who showed up to a Thursday membership meeting voted to ratify the three-year deal, Superintendent Donn Mendoza said Friday.

Mendoza declined to release any details of the contract until after the board votes on the agreement on Tuesday.

"It's a fiscally responsible contract for the school district," Mendoza said. "It will allow us to keep people working. It will allow us to avoid substantive (layoffs). It allows the administration and board to continue our positive relationship with the bargaining unit."

Teachers union Co-president Deb Gorecki declined to comment. She would not confirm the vote tally or say whether she thought the contract was fair.

The agreement with teachers comes as the board is working to hold costs down next year in the face of declining state funding.

The board voted this month to freeze salaries for all nonunion staff, including Mendoza and other administrators.

"It was my recommendation that we freeze those salaries because of current conditions," Mendoza said. "I could not justify increasing compensation dollars."

The district is in the middle of three-year agreements with the unions that represent its bus drivers and service workers. District leaders are set to begin negotiating a deal with newly unionized paraprofessionals (teacher aides) in the fall, Mendoza said.

"I don't have a feeling one way or the other," Mendoza said about the district's newest union. "It is what it is."

The district has more than 600 teachers and between 225 and 250 paraprofessionals, according to the superintendent.