Teachers will receive a 3.5 percent average salary increase and expanded health care benefits in the one-year contract ratified by the district and the Burlington Education Association covering the 2019-2020 school year.
The 3.5 percent is a significant increase from the last contract, which provided a 2.5 percent raise in the 2017-18 school year and a 2.75 percent increase for the 2018-19 school year.
Teachers’ salary negotiations proceeded more smoothly this year than in the recent past. Teachers went on a four-day strike in September 2017. In 2016, a last-minute agreement averted a planned strike.
The union’s ratification vote for the contract was “nearly unanimous,” BEA communications director Betsy Nolan said.
Chair Clare Wool said the school board was also satisfied with the contract.
“We believe it’s a fair and reasonable contract,” Wool said. “As a board, we want to retain and attract teaching professionals to Burlington, and … we are satisfied and look forward to working together.”
The contract improves teachers’ health care benefits and gives teachers more input in their buildings, BEA president Andrew Styles said. Teachers will also have two additional hours of planning time each month.
“I think this will do a lot to help us attract teachers coming in and help us keep the teachers we have now,” Styles said.
Nolan said she thought the changes in the membership of school board played a role in making the negotiations a more collaborative process.
“I think both the Burlington Education Association and the school board were committed to having this process be different this year and demonstrating to the community the ability to work collaboratively, because our interests are the same, which is educating kids,” Nolan said.
“I think both groups came to the table with good will and understood that we needed to demonstrate to our community and staff that we could work together and find solutions,” he said.
Obeng said the district was happy that teachers will now be supervising students during unstructured times during the school day, such as recess and between classes. In the past, building administrators and hired monitors were responsible for that supervision.
“Those are the times when kids misbehave, because there isn’t a monitor or someone who knows who they are,” he said. “I know that the best people who know our students are their teachers, so that’s who we want monitoring them during unstructured times.”
School board member Mark Barlow has been on the negotiation team the last couple of cycles and said that he was pleased that there would be no contentious, ongoing fight between the board and the BEA.
“I think it’s positive that we’re not going to have a year with the frictions we’ve had with the BEA the past couple of cycles,” he said. “We didn’t ask for a lot operationally, I think we paid a premium to settle quickly.”
However, he said that he wished the salary increase was a little lower, since he thought the previous salary increases — in the two percent range — kept the district competitive with the surrounding area. Higher increases put a pressure on the city’s tax rate, he said.
“It felt a little one directional to me,” he said.
Obeng said he hopes that this year’s negotiations set the standard for the willingness on both sides to listen and compromise.
“We also have to consider the community’s ability to pay, so that’s the challenge, to have that balance,” Obeng said. “We wish we could support all our staff who support our children with as much dollars as possible, but the reality is that’s not the case.”
