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Kaneland board OKs 4-year teacher contract

The Kaneland school board agreed Tuesday to new contract with its teachers that will give them pay raises that total 17.37 percent over three years.

Board members Ryan Kerry and Pedro Rivas voted against it.

The contract will increase salaries by 17.37 percent over the first three years. For the fourth year, an undetailed revenue-sharing formula will be used to determine the increase.

The base starting salary will be raised to $40,468.

The contract will also phase out the one-time post-retirement stipend the district pays. Now. teachers with 10 or more years service receive an $850 stipend. That will change to those with 15 or more years of service, and drop to $600 in the first year, $400 the second year, and $200 in the third year of the contract.

Rivas said he voted against it because the board was not voting on a finished document. Kerry also did not like that the board did not have the final version of the document. The final version should be done by the end of January, according to Julie-Ann Fuchs, the district's associate superintendent.

But mainly, Kerry voted against it for substantive reasons.

"As a board member, it is our responsibility to look at the big picture, and in my opinion this relegates too much money in the future to one particular source (of district spending)," Kerry said. " ... there are other expenses coming down the road."

He also said a formula to set raises in the fourth year of the contract "doesn't leave the district protection if there is a loss of revenue."

It is common practice for local school boards to approve rough agreements, and have staff and lawyers finish the documents later.

"Nobody gets everything that they want in this process. It's best for the kids, its best for the teachers, its best for the community," said board member Peter Lopatin.

The Kaneland Education Association ratified the contract Dec. 17, 251-18.

The contract covers 358 teachers, librarians, psychologists and social workers.

Negotiations began at the end of March. The contract expired June 30.

The terms of the new contract will be retroactive to July 1.

In November, the KEA filed an intent-to-strike notice. It and the school board then released information about their respective offers. The union held a public forum to explain its positions.

The union contended that the district was losing young teachers because its starting pay was near the bottom of that offered by 13 other, nearby school districts. It said that the district had more than enough money in reserves to increase pay. It also said that it now believes that a pay freeze it agreed to in 2010 was not necessary.

The district disagreed with how the union characterized the reserves. It offered a three-year contract with pay raises of about 5 percent each year. It also wanted to lessen raises in the third year, if it received less general state aid or if the state shifted more of the costs of teachers' pensions to the district, if the effect of those changes equated to $200,000 or more.

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Kaneland board, union at odds over teacher pay raises

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