[S]chool contract negotiations in Burlington hit a roadblock this week.
The teachers union says the school board is breaking a promise made during the last contract talks three years ago to bring their salaries in line with colleagues in neighboring districts.
The school board says that Burlington taxpayers can’t handle large salary and health care increases.
Now a mediator will have to sort out a one-year compromise.
“It is so frustrating that they have broken their promise,” said Bob Abbey, Burlington Education Association president.
But Mark Porter, chair of the Burlington Board of School Commissioners, said that the board members who made that promise are no longer serving.
“We don’t understand the reason behind it,” Porter said. “Why even have a contract at all if salaries are just going to go up based on contract negotiations in neighboring districts?”
Teachers were expecting a 7.4 percent average salary increase this year, but the board offered them a 1.8 percent average pay raise.
Porter says the Burlington School District faces different challenges than surrounding communities. The city has a higher percentage of low-income students and students with learning disabilities, and both of these demographic groups are more expensive to educate, he said.
More than half of the students in the Burlington School District — 62 percent — qualify for the Free and Reduced Price Lunch program, an indicator of poverty. The district spends 15 percent of the budget on special education.
“Many of the other communities don’t face what Burlington is faced with and it is not fair to be held up to other communities that can afford to have these amounts [to spend] and Burlingtonians don’t make the same money and they don’t have the same benefits,” Porter said.
With this in mind, Porter said the Burlington school board made an effort to keep teacher pay in line with inflation and pay increases for the workforce in the city. Board members call it a “regional salary competitiveness adjustment.”
Porter said in a statement about the impasse that “given the financial challenges facing the district, city and the state,” the board hoped the Burlington Education Association “would recognize that it is time for a more affordable and sustainable approach reflecting the circumstances of taxpayers and the needs of students.”
“Sadly, that was not the case,” Porter wrote.
Burlington teachers are in the final year of a three-year contract. In the past, they have ranked seventh or below on teacher salary schedules for Chittenden County. A selling point at the last round of talks was that by the end of the three year contract, in 2016, teachers salaries would be in the fifth place — or mid-range among neighboring school districts. When teachers accepted a smaller-than-hoped-for raise back in 2013, it was because they believed that the board would make up it up to them in 2016.
“While they couldn’t bring us to the exact middle because they didn’t have the money three years ago, this year was going to be the shore up year,” Abbey said. “The agreement clearly states: We will bring you to the middle.”
But again this year, the Burlington school board is claiming it doesn’t have the money, according to Abbey.
Burlington teacher pay increases over the past three years were three to five times the rate of inflation, according to the school board’s press release. The average teacher salary in Burlington is $71,624. With benefits, the average compensation package is worth about $100,000, according to Porter.
To pay for the salary increase, the board was planning to shift money from reimbursements to teachers for graduate classes, since less than half of the teaching staff were using the benefit. They also identified $325,000 that was meant to pay for “automatic step advancement” on the salary schedule. The union didn’t like this arrangement.
The board would like to move away from the old step-increase model to a more flexible system. They say the steps are higher than inflation and are generally larger than raises made by the average worker.
“The salary grid that may have worked 40 years ago no longer serves the interests of the community,” Porter stated.
Health insurance was the other sticky issue. The board would like to shift more of the burden onto teachers for the premium costs and are recommending they increase their contribution from 15 percent to 19 percent of the cost. “This is still on the generous side – the state [state employees] is at 20 percent,” Porter said.
While some might wonder if the spending limits in Act 46 had anything to do with the Burlington Board of School Commissioners hitting the brakes on spending increases, Porter said they didn’t. “Act 46 isn’t the culprit for us, it is the exorbitant costs, it is just not sustainable and it is harming things.”
What isn’t sustainable, according to Abbey is cutting teaching staff while spending money that is far away from the classroom — on consultants and central office staff.
“Staffing [teacher] continues to be cut but there is funding,” said Abbey. “The explosion of the central office over the last three is mindboggling.”
Abbey says that there are millions of dollars unaccounted for and the union is demanding transparency. “We don’t feel like you are negotiating in earnest when a large chunk of your budget is not identified and you are told we don’t know where it is, we just don’t have the money.”
But Porter said the board is seeking to make the district’s finances transparent. “We want the voters to know what is on the table,” Porter said. “We are the ones that published our audit. We put it right out there on the webpage for everyone to see. They are saying we are hiding things? What are they talking about? It is just not true at all.”
Porter said they are dedicated to continuing to tighten up controls. “We have worked really hard to reel this thing in [spending]. Is there more work to do? Absolutely.”
