Mundelein High teachers get modest raises in new 4-year contract
Mundelein High School teachers will receive modest pay raises under a newly approved four-year contract.
Under the deal, the salaries of 138 unionized employees will increase less than 1 percent this year and slightly more in each of the following three years.
The deal, effective immediately, also increases the base salary for a new teacher to $44,476, up from $44,211.
The school board approved the agreement with the Mundelein Education Association by a 6-0 vote. Board member Al Hitzke was absent.
The contract will cover teachers, guidance counselors, social workers and a few other employees in the labor union.
About 100 other staffers, including administrators and workers in a different union, aren’t affected by the deal.
The deal resulted from six months of negotiations. The talks focused on professional development and staff training, according to a statement issued by the district after the deal was inked.
Superintendent Jody Ware spoke positively about the negotiations.
“The union understood our concerns (about) financial stability, and we understood their concerns (about) more professional growth opportunities and autonomy in planning the professional growth,” Ware said in an email.
As part of the contract, teachers will receive:
타 A 0.6-percent raise this school year.
타 A 0.9-percent raise in the 2013-14 term.
타 A 1-percent raise in the 2014-15 school year.
타 A 1.25-percent raise in the 2015-16 term.
Despite the planned raises, the average salary for Mundelein High’s teachers is expected to decrease this year because of the retirement of some better-paid staffers, Ware said. Estimates were not immediately available.
Association President Dean Petros said the staff is pleased with the deal. He called the process “collaborative.”
“We already had a strong contract from both of our vantage points, and the new one just needed a little fine tuning,” Petros, a social studies teacher, said in an email.
The new deal replaces a contract adopted in May 2010. That agreement took two years to put together and was retroactively effective starting in the 2009-10 school year.