Negotiations Updates - 2007-09 Contract

November 6, 2007

The new salary rates, reflecting a 2.5% raise for 2007-08, will go into effect on your November 16 paycheck. The target date for paying retroactive salary is December 14. 

October 30, 2007

MTEA teacher members have ratified the 2007-09 teacher contract by 94.3% -- an overwhelming margin.  3,400 teachers voted to accept the contract, and only 204 members rejected the agreement. 

Read our press release .

October 4, 2007

The MTEA’s teacher bargaining team and the School Board’s team have reached a tentative agreement on a new, 2-year teacher contract.

The highlights are:

• 2 across-the-board salary raises
  • 2.5% retroactive to July 1, 2007
  • 2.5% effective July 1, 2008.
• Several procedural changes aimed at maintaining safe and orderly schools.
• A city-wide mentor program to support new teachers.
• Measures to help the district be more competitive in hiring the best qualified new teachers.

Details, including the ratification steps:

Salary Schedule & Retroactive Pay

School Interviews

Safety and Discipline

Support for New Teachers

Support for Special Education Teachers (grievance resolution)

Teacher Quality

Ratification 

 

Salary Schedule & Retroactive Pay

Download the 191-day teacher salary schedule  for the 2007-08 school year. (Other schedules will be available soon.)

Factoring in Step Increases

Teachers who have not reached the maximum in their salary division (lane) receive an annual step increase - in addition to the across-the-board raises. If you are receiving annual increments, you need to factor in your step increases to determine your new salary rate.

 

 

For example, a teacher who was at Step 7 in the MA lane for the 2006-07 school year moved to Step 8 at the start of 2007-08. Step increases are automatic, even if the contract is not resolved.

 

 

The combination of the step increase and 2.5% raise will move this "middle-of-the-schedule" teacher from $48,350 at Step 7 in 2006-07 to $50,055 at Step 8 (effective on the September 7 paycheck) and to $51,306 at Step 8 when the 2.5% raise for 2007-08 is implemented.

"Red-Circled" Teachers

Teachers in the BA or BA+16 lanes, whose salaries exceeded the schedule maximums when the master-premised schedule was created in the 1990-92 contract, have "red-circled" salaries. As in the past, they will receive the same dollar amount raises as teachers at the maximum of their salary lane (BA or BA+16).

Retroactive Pay

The teacher membership vote will be completed prior to School Board ratification vote scheduled for October 30. After the pact is ratified by both parties, the timetable for retro pay will be set.

School Interviews - Earlier and More
 

Most schools use the negotiated school interview team process to fill teacher vacancies. Last school year, there were 3 rounds (or "cycles") of school interviews from early May through mid-June.

The new contract will greatly expand the time period for interviews – starting as early as March 1 and ending on June 30. Each cycle of interviews will take 2-3 weeks. The number of cycles each spring will increase to 5 or more. The exact schedule of the interview cycles will be set in February each school year.

The school interview process will not occur from July 1 through the staffing which is based on student enrollment on the third Friday of September. During this "moratorium," the MPS Human Resources Department will follow the contract (seniority) and past practice in assigning teachers to vacancies.
 

Earlier Hiring and Placement of New Teachers

The new contract will help MPS compete with other school districts in hiring the best-qualified, new teachers.

• Vacancies for the next school year will be identified 1 month earlier. The deadline for teachers to submit their retirement/resignation notice to MPS (now April 1) will be moved to March 1.
• The school interview process, which will start March 1, will include new hires in the first round.
• New hires in 4 "high need" certification areas – bilingual, math, science, and special education – will be able to interview at any school during the first round of the school interview process.
• New hires in any certification area will be able to interview at NEA Foundation Grant schools or Schools Identified for Improvement (SIFI) during the first round of interviews. By contract, there will be a limit of no more than 40 such schools each school year. 

Safety and Discipline

The new contract contains several provisions aimed at maintaining security and improving discipline throughout the district.

• Non-school personnel will be required to immediately report to the school office when they enter a school. If authorized to go to a classroom, visitors will be escorted by the school administrator or his/her designee.
• School administrators will establish an emergency communication procedure – so that teachers can notify the office and receive help immediately.
• A teacher who has been physically assaulted by a student will be offered the opportunity to testify at the central office suspension and/or expulsion hearing.
• All suspended students will be excluded from the building and not allowed to attend classes or any other activities at school.
• A reinstatement conference will be held prior to reinstating suspended students.
• In addition to the student, parent, and school administrator, the referring teacher will be included in the reinstatement conference if the suspension was due to an assault on a teacher or due to a threat to a teacher’s physical safety.
• In all other suspension reinstatement conferences, the school administrator will make every effort to include the referring teacher.
• If it is impossible to schedule suspension or expulsion hearings or reinstatement conferences during the teacher workday, they will be held immediately before or after the teacher workday.
• In grievances on disciplining a dangerous or chronically disruptive student, the sole issue before an arbitrator will be whether the administrator acted reasonably.
• The new contract will require school administrators to take the following steps with teachers on organization day each school year:
  • Review the school's student disciplinary policy.
  • Review the school's crisis plan, including the staff's role.
  • Provide a copy of the school’s crisis plan to all teachers.
  • Review and provide a copy of the "Parent/Student Handbook on Rights, Responsibilities, and Discipline" to each teacher.
  • Present the school’s emergency communication procedure.
• The new contract will add several specific references to the MPS Parent/Student Handbook on Rights, Responsibilities, and Discipline. The handbook spells out district standards for disciplinary action. The references will reinforce consistent application of the standards in all schools – especially if a teacher is battered (physically assaulted) or if "a student poses a physical threat to the teacher’s safety."
   
• Schools will be required to send two items to the homes of the students no later than September 30 of each year.
  • The school’s discipline policy.
  • Each teacher’s classroom discipline policy.

Implementation Note - Although the salary raise is retroactive, new language is usually not, unless there is a specific agreement. For example, the organization day and September 30 deadlines outlined above have passed.

Because of the critical need for safety and discipline in all schools, MTEA and MPS representatives are discussing implementation of the steps with organization day and September 30 deadlines. These steps will be implemented after ratification.
 

Joint Committee on Safety and Discipline

The new contract will establish a joint committee of an equal number of members appointed by the School Board and by the MTEA. Its three-fold purpose will be to:

• Improve communication over safety and discipline issues.
• Review policies and procedures for safe learning environments within MPS.
• Provide a forum for raising issues and solving problems.

The joint committee may discuss topics such as:

• Alternative placements (sites/models)
• Legislative action/lobbying
• Police/Community/MPS issues
• Training/staff development on safety and discipline
• Methods for notifying staff of students with significant behavioral problems (for student and staff safety)

Support for New Teachers

The new contract will restore the citywide mentor teacher program to provide support to first-year teachers. The program gave invaluable support to first-year teachers prior to elimination due to budget cuts.

The new contract calls for 15 mentor teachers who will each work with no more than 15 first-year teachers. The number of mentors may be adjusted to provide 1 mentor for every first-year teacher.

Experienced teachers (5 successful years or more in MPS) will be released full-time to work with new teachers. These mentors will demonstrate lessons, share strategies and resources, provide emotional support, offer guidance on classroom management, help develop cultural awareness, and provide other needed assistance. Mentors will not evaluate new teachers.

At the same time that the mentor teacher program is being restored, a relaxed standard of evidence required for dismissing non-tenured teachers will also be restored. Based on the effectiveness of mentor teacher support in the past, we expect there will be little if any use of the relaxed dismissal standard. Both the mentor program and the relaxed standard will sunset on June 30, 2012.

The new contract will place restrictions on new teacher requests for an incompatibility transfer during their first 3 semesters. The support available to new teachers should minimize such requests.

Support for Special Education Teachers - Additional Payment

The 2005-07 contract required MPS to develop 7 cadres of special education teachers assigned to MRP (Most Restrictive Placement) classes. Each cadre was to be made up of no more than 10 teachers. 7 mentor teachers were to be assigned, 1 to each cadre, to support MRP teachers with professional development, coping strategies, modeling teaching methods, locating resources, etc.

The MTEA proposed the MRP mentors/cadres to meet a dire need for support of inexperienced MRP special education teachers and to help retain them in MPS.

The program was charged against the teacher package costing and should have been implemented during 2006-07. Instead, MPS unilaterally decided not to implement it last school year.
 

Grievance Resolution

The MTEA filed a grievance over this blatant violation of the contract, and MPS implemented the MRP mentor program at the start of this school year.

Recently, MPS also issued a grievance disposition to address the monetary impact of its failure to implement the program during 2006-07. The disposition states: "The Board will provide a lump sum (non-base building) of $760,000 to be equally divided among all teachers on the payroll as of the date of ratification of the 2007-09 contract."
 

A Separate Matter

The MRP mentor violation was a contentious issue during 2007-09 contract talks. But the grievance disposition is not part of the tentative agreement and not subject to ratification.

If there are 6,000 teachers on the payroll when the School Board votes on contract ratification on October 30, each teacher would receive $126.67. The date for payment has not been set.

More Work on Teacher Quality

The MTEA’s teacher bargaining team and the School Board’s team recognize the need to negotiate additional changes to attract and retain the best teachers for careers in MPS. However, several complex changes at issue in the recently completed talks require more in-depth analysis and deeper discussions.
 

Joint Study Committee

To address these issues, the new contract will establish a Labor Management Committee for ongoing discussion of the following:

• Professional Development/Master Teachers/Differentiated Compensation
• Incompatibility Transfer/Day-to-Day Teacher Assignments/The Teacher Reassignment Process
• Residency
• Accumulated Leave 403(b)/Payroll Deductions for a Political Conduit/Adding More Tax Deferred Annuity Options
• Domestic Partnership Benefits

Five joint subcommittees, comprised of an equal number of MTEA and School Board representatives, will work on these issues and develop recommendations. The subcommittees will begin their work within 60 days after ratification.

Ratification

As in the past, you will receive a Ratification Document (including Incompatibility Transfer form) prior to voting on the new contract. It will contain all of the new and changed language, as well as the new salary rates and schedules.

The Ratification Document will be distributed as soon as it is printed. The target date is October 15.
 

Balloting on October 22-24

Your school’s BR has been asked to help prepare an up-to-date roster of teachers assigned to your school. Based on BR reports, voting lists of members will be finalized – so that ballots can be delivered to schools on Monday, October 22.

BR’s will conduct the balloting over three days:

• Monday, October 22
• Tuesday, October 23
• Wednesday, October 24
   

MTEA Leadership Recommends Ratification

The MTEA Executive Board has reviewed the tentative agreement and unanimously recommends its ratification to the membership. By constitution, members vote by written, secret ballot.

The contract will be ratified if a majority of the active teacher members voting approve it.
 

Clarification of "School Leaders"

When you review the Ratification Document, please note that a new phrase “school administrators/school leaders” is replacing “principal” in many new contract provisions. The School Board’s team proposed this language change to recognize that at several small schools, there is no principal present. These sites are often called “teacher-led" schools.

While teachers who serve as “school leaders” perform limited administrative tasks, they are not administrators. They have no role in evaluation and other supervisory duties. For example, if an allegation of misconduct arises at a teacher-led school, an MPS principal will handle the contractual due process steps. (All teacher-led schools are “administratively attached,” usually to a principal at a nearby school.)
 

For Contract Violations

The first step of the grievance procedure is a conference where a teacher presents the issue “to the principal orally.”

If a school leader, a teacher, fails to enforce the contract, the conference must be held with the principal who is administratively responsible for the teacher-led school.
 

Parallel to Most Schools

In schools with a principal and an assistant principal, the responsibility for contract enforcement rests with the principal. If an assistant principal does not follow the contract, the first step of the grievance procedure is a conference where the teacher presents the issue “to the principal orally.”