U-46 teachers give contract a big OK
Elgin Area School District U-46 teachers Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a contract proposal reached after a protracted yearlong negotiation process between the district and the state's second-largest teachers union.
With 85 percent of teachers weighing in by secret ballot, 1,597, or 76.4 percent, voted for the three-year deal, and 493, or 23.6 percent, voted against.
Tim Davis, president of the Elgin Teachers Association, said he was pleased with the voter turnout and surprised at the contract's approval.
"I wasn't sure what to expect. I thought the contract would pass, but by how much, I wasn't sure," he said.
Elgin High School civics teacher Leigh Bailey said there was a lot of anticipation making sure union members voted on the contract.
Teachers received contracts via e-mail Friday. Polls were open at Elgin High School from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Bailey said.
"I came in at 7 a.m. and voted right away," she said. "… I'd been thinking about the whole thing for a couple days. In general, I think it was positive."
Under the terms of the new contract, teachers will receive 4.2 percent raises this year.
The pay increase includes 3.8 percent across-the-board raises plus a 0.4 percent increase in what the district pays into teacher retirement funds. This would be applied on top of raises for educational advancement and experience awarded annually to teachers.
Unlike the tentative contract rejected Oct. 15 by union members, the new contract commits to a solid 3.8 percent raise for the 2008-09 school year.
Raises for 2009-10 remain tied to the rate of inflation, and could be between 2.5 percent and 3.8 percent, the contract states.
When put together, the pay raise and increases for experience and education, called step and lane increases, would give the average teacher raises of 6.1 percent in the first year of the contract, 5.7 percent in the second year, and between 4.4 percent and 5.7 percent in the third year.
The agreement also mandates a teaching assistant for all elementary classes with more than 30 students. The original contract called for a teaching assistant in elementary special-needs classes of 30 and in any other kindergarten through sixth-grade classes of 32 or more students.
Class sizes at middle and high schools remain largely unaddressed, with the exception of additional physical education classes at the high school level beginning in January.
A class size and case load task force will be established to better look into those issues, the new contract says.
School board President Ken Kaczynski noted that in the course of the last two teachers contracts, "we've changed some big things… The fact that it took a little more time to approve this, that's fine." That the agreement was reached through dialogue and listening to different viewpoints is significant, he said.
The school board will vote on approving the contract at their next regular meeting on Jan. 14, district officials outlined in an e-mail.
If approved, retroactive pay raises will go into effect Jan. 30, Davis said.