No deal reached in U-46 teacher contract talks

After 15 hours at the bargaining table Tuesday, Elgin Area School District U-46 officials and union leaders failed to reach a tentative contract deal for teachers, union officials said Wednesday.

Both sides now are scheduled to meet with a federal mediator Dec. 6 and Dec. 11 to try to resolve the issue.

The district's 2,400 teachers have been working under the terms of an expired contract since the beginning of the school year.

A narrow majority of them rejected a tentative three-year agreement in October.

The deal that members opposed, by a vote of 1,183 to 1,125, called for average raises of 6.1 percent in the first year of the contract and average raises of between 4.4 percent and 5.7 percent, determined by the rate of inflation, in the second and third years of the contract.

But in a recent survey, teachers who rejected the deal said their main problem with the contract wasn't the salary provision.

The teachers overwhelmingly listed large class sizes and case loads -- and the deal's failure to address those concerns -- as the primary factors influencing their vote.

The deal would have provided two teacher aides at each high school and one aide at each middle school to relieve excessive class sizes, a fix that teachers called inadequate.

Teachers who voted "no" ranked salaries in the second and third years of the contract as their second greatest concern. The proposed evaluation system came in third, followed by the salary in the first year of the contract.

The vote also was a statement that teachers feel overburdened, overstressed and underappreciated, teachers have said.

In the extended comment section of the survey, 65 teachers said they voted to send a message to the board of education, and 60 complained of a lack of respect and support from district administrators.

Since the October vote, bargaining teams have met three times.

Initially, the groups said they would bring in a mediator if they did not reach a deal last Monday.

They then scheduled Tuesday's failed bargaining session as a last-ditch effort to resolve the dispute without outside help.

Union officials declined to comment until meeting with leadership groups.

District officials would confirm only that bargaining teams have scheduled two sessions with a federal mediator.

Under state law, education unions may not declare a strike before engaging in mediation.

Union officials also must file an intent to strike notice 10 days before enacting a work stoppage.