Movement reported on salaries in Geneva teacher contract talks
Contract talks are scheduled to resume Tuesday between the Geneva school board and the Geneva Education Association. with the threat of a possible strike looming.
Teachers have authorized their union to call a walkout as early as Nov. 13 if an agreement can't be reached.
The school board announced this week that it has increased its salary offer to boost individual teachers' pay by $2,050 a year each year of a three-year contract. Over the life of the contract, that would amount to a total of $2.5 million, according to the district.
Officials also said the board would increase the amount starting teachers are paid beyond what the union proposed.
It also is offering a salary increase of 3 percent for each level of attainment for teachers who earn postgraduate credit hours or degrees, but it did not specify how many such levels there are in its proposal.
The union, meanwhile, has lowered its salary request and is now seeking 5.75 percent raises for each of the first two years of a three-year contract and 6 percent in the third.
It also wants a 5 percent salary bump for educational attainment and the school district to pay more for health care insurance premiums.
Neither side has released its full proposals publicly.
State report card data for 2017 sets the average annual teacher salary in Geneva at $68,322, second among the nine unit school districts in Kane County. It is calculated using the actual amounts paid to specific people.
The union says that average likely will decline in the next two years as 33 higher-paid teachers are expected to retire and be replaced by less experienced, lower-paid ones.
It also has compared three spots on the current Geneva salary schedule to similar spots on the schedules for the other seven Chicago-area unit school districts that, like Geneva, are labeled Tier IV under the state's evidence-based funding model. According to the union's calculations, Geneva is the lowest-paid in two of the categories, and second-lowest in the third.
The charts compare Geneva to districts in Barrington, Elmhurst, Lake Zurich, Lisle, Naperville, St. Charles and Westmont.
The two sides also disagree over the form of a salary schedule. The district said the union is requesting "a salary schedule similar to the structure which both parties had agreed to eliminate as part of the last contract agreement."
That would be the step-and-lane format, where pay is determined both by a teacher's experience and level of education attained. In 2012 board President Mark Grosso called step-and-lane "antiquated."
But union President Kevin Gannon said the union "never agreed to eliminate a salary schedule" and has proposed several new models.