Glen Ellyn Dist. 41 board, teachers OK new contract
Glen Ellyn Elementary District 41 teachers and the school board have approved a two-year contract after just a month of negotiations.
The pay structure for teachers will remain unchanged from the previous pact between the board and the Glen Ellyn Education Association, the union that represents 269 educators in the district. The district will continue to use a formula based on the consumer price index, a measure of inflation, to calculate base pay increases.
The contract will provide union members with salary increases of 3.18 percent in the first year of the deal that takes effect July 1. The district does not have a traditional salary schedule with so-called step and lane increases tied to teachers' length of service and education.
The school board signed off on the pact Tuesday. The two sides began talks Jan. 19.
"Both the board and GEEA thank the negotiating teams for their thoughtful collaboration to make this contract a reality within the 30-day negotiating period agreed on by both parties," officials said in a statement. "This is the second consecutive time the contract has been largely rolled over from previous years."
The district expects the agreement to increase costs next year by roughly $720,000 based on current pay totals for association members and the index, which rose 2.1 percent over the past 12 months ending in January, the U.S. Labor Department announced last week.
A new teacher hired in the first year of the contract with a bachelor's degree and no previous teaching experience will receive a $49,351 salary.
Teachers and school board bargaining teams did renegotiate provisions calling for a reorganization of the internal district and building leadership teams. Hadley Junior High School also will dismiss students five minutes later at 3:30 p.m.
The teachers ratified the contract Tuesday shortly before the board meeting, said Tracy Guerrieri and Dina Sbarra, the association's co-presidents. Of the 199 members who voted, 195 favored ratifying the agreement and four opposed it.
"As a membership, we asked if the board would be willing to extend the majority of our current contract for two more years and with the exception of a few small changes, they agreed to do that," Guerrieri and Sbarra said in a joint statement.
The contract will expire in July 2020.
The school board this week also approved a four-year contract with the support staff union. That deal, retroactive to July 1, ends about 10 months of negotiations between the board and the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 1334.
The district serves more than 3,500 students in preschool, four elementary schools and Hadley Junior High.