Contract talks between the Tacoma School District and its teachers union ended Saturday night without a tentative agreement. No negotiations took place Sunday, and none were set for Monday.
Members of the Tacoma Education Association (TEA) are scheduled to gather at 4:45 p.m. Monday at Mount Tahoma High School, where they will decide whether to keep working under terms of their contract that expired Aug. 31 or to strike over issues that include pay, class size and – the biggest point of contention, both sides say – how teachers can be reassigned or transferred within the district.
If teachers strike, there will be no school Tuesday, the district announced.
The school district promises to send email and phone messages to families as quickly as possible Monday night to let them know whether kids should report to school Tuesday.
A TEA vote Aug. 31 – the day the teachers’ contract expired – failed to gather enough votes to authorize a strike.
Teachers agreed to start school on time Sept. 1 and let bargaining continue, but they scheduled another vote for Monday. At least 200 teachers who were unable to make Monday night’s meeting were allowed to cast ballots early, on Thursday and Friday last week. Union officials say the early voting is allowed under TEA bylaws.
On Sunday, the school district issued a news release and published a chart on its website, www.tacomaschools.org, comparing its position taken during recent negotiations to that of the union’s.
The district said it has offered to maintain existing class-size maximums. Currently those limits are set at 24 students in kindergarten, 27 in grades one and two, 28 in grades three through five, 28 in middle school (34 in middle school music and P.E.) and 30 in high school. High school music and P.E. classes can have up to 35. Special-education class sizes are set lower.
These numbers are maximums, and some classes wind up with fewer students. If the maximum is exceeded for several weeks, teachers can ask for students to be reassigned, ask for an aide or sign a waiver to allow the extra students, under expired contract rules.
The union has asked for class-size limits to be reduced by one student at each grade level – a proposal the district said Sunday would cost an estimated $1.8 million a year. The district also said it has lost $13 million in state funds aimed at keeping class sizes low.
TEA President Andy Coons said the class-size issue hasn’t been actively discussed in the past week. He said the union is concerned because the district has tied its class-size proposal to other parts of a package – pay and transfer language – that his members object to.
Asked if TEA could live with maintaining current contract language on class size if it was separated from the other two sticking points, Coons said: “I think separating them out would be a good start. It would help us do business.”
District spokesman Dan Voelpel said the class-size proposal is no longer part of a package deal.
On the issue of pay, the district said Sunday it has offered teachers two options. It said they could maintain the current pay schedule and sacrifice pay for one personal day, one individual optional training day and one school-wide training day.
Or, they could accept an effective 1.35 percent cut in the salary schedule. In exchange, teachers would be allowed to schedule 2.5 furlough days, in conjunction with their principal.
The district stated that in both cases, it will reinstate the paid days if the state rescinds its funding reduction for teacher pay. The district also said it would reopen the contract to address pay for the 2013-14 school year.
The union has asked to maintain the current pay schedule. But to account for the lack of a 1 percent raise negotiated in past contracts, it would ask for four school half days to replace what are now full days for students and teachers.
Coons said teachers believe that if they agree to the 2.5 furlough days, “the district is banking on the goodwill of teachers that they won’t take the days.”
He said there already are shortages of substitute teachers, and he said absences create more work for teachers and create scheduling nightmares for principals.
“It’s not a vacation day,” he said of a furlough day. “It’s you doing a lesson plan for every minute of the day.” And he said his members object to cuts from professional-development days because those would be a “silent takeway.”
“The public won’t see it. We won’t get it back,” he said.
On the thorny issue of teacher reassignments, the district said that it offered on Saturday to informally alter its proposal. The district would base transfers on five factors: length of service, experience, building alignment, ability and credentials. Seniority would be used as a tiebreaker.
Voelpel said the proposal wasn’t a formal one. He said district negotiators asked the union if it would be interested if there were a language change in its earlier proposal, which teachers had criticized as too subjective and prone to abuses by administrators.
“TEA said no,” Voelpel said.
Coons said the district’s five factors still contain subjective factors such as ability and building alignment. “Without clear definitions and safeguards, it’s absolutely not ratifiable,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we’re not willing to work on these things.”
He said his negotiators want to know how the district would prepare for such a “big culture change.” Specifically, they want to know if there would be training for principals and staff members on how the new rules would work.
“We asked clarifying questions,” Coons said. “We didn’t get answers. Bargaining ended.”
Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635
debbie.cafazzo@thenewstribune.com
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