New Contract!

Everyone came out on Thursday night to vote to ratify our new contract. What a wonderful job our bargaining team did! We didn't get everything we asked for, but I think this is the best offer we were likely to see. It was gratifying to see the school board approve the contract. It's official.

What's in it? For most folks it was a 4%, 4%, 4%. Approximately 200 members (those at the top of the pay scale) got a 11.5-12% raise over the next three years. Everybody else got at least 12%. The raise structure was intended to help newer teachers more, but as Larry Ehnert pointed out, 11.5% of 70,000 is a lot more than 13% of $40,000. I'm somewhere in the (lower end of the) middle. My friends who've been teaching a long time aren't as thrilled, but I understand the reasoning behind the structure. It's going to make starting teacher salaries more comparable to those around the state. They also added an additional column past Masters + 36 credits that includes a national certification. The interesting thing is that if you have your masters and then get board certified, you jump over to that column. That's a big jump. It will restructure the way most of us think about acquiring our credits.

We get the "new" health insurance, which is the old health insurance with coverage options for singles, couples, & families. We kept our deductibles and they upped the max coverage from one million to two million. Prep time didn't change much. There is some new language that is supposed to help elementary teachers hold on to the prep time they are supposed to get. We are also now all committed to two evening events per year. (Most of us were going to them anyway.)

As for posting grades, the language is vague and relies on "professional judgement." Basically, you are supposed to post every two to three weeks, but there is no hard or fast rule. If the big essay project is going to take you longer than three weeks to get through grading, no one is going to flip. The team said they couldn't really argue that once every nine weeks was professional, and I can see their point. It's not fun to be told we have to post that often, but most of us do anyway.

SAS contracts (extra duties like coaching or sponsoring) changed a little. They raised the "hourly" rates each year and some activites/sports got moved up to a range with more hours. They created a range 8 with more hours, which most of the varsity sports moved into. The only thing that moved down was cheerleading, which didn't seem fair to me. I know how much time our cheerleading coach spends and she works really hard. Drama didn't move, (I'm a range 5, which is supposed to spend 150 hours...hah!) but since I get a contract per production, it works out fairly compared to other activities.

Well, now that the contract is all settled, we look forward to the elections. Check your candidates for their positions on education. Find out who's for getting rid of No Child Left Behind in Alaska. See who's for more (rather than less) funding for Fairbanks education. Vote for who will do right by Fairbanks children. FEA has a list of candidates they endorse. I know Joe Paskvan has a pretty pro-education stand, and Mike Kelly is about as anti-education as you can get. But don't take my word for it. Get out there and find out! Vote your conscience...just VOTE!

Thanks again to everyone who supported us, cheered us on, walked or stood with us. Whenever I got down, there was always someone there, reminding me why we do this. Thank you.

PS. Check out behsdrama.blogspot.com for our next production!