After a 45-minute executive session, the Haines Borough school board Tuesday accepted a revised contract with the local teachers’ union. The two-year pay and benefits agreement will cost the district about $55,000 annually.
The agreement amounts to pay raises of between .7 percent and 10.2 percent for 22 certified teachers. Under the change, the district’s starting pay for full-time teachers increased from $41,600 to $45,000. Maximum pay was reduced from $80,611 to $78,400.
Under the changes, the step increases in pay for longevity are as much as three times higher for new teachers than they are for district veterans.
The agreement shifts more pay to starting teachers while maintaining pay for others. About six teachers whose pay would drop under the agreed-upon salary schedule will be “held harmless” by the changes and receive $600 in addition to their current pay.
Patty Brown, a member of the union’s negotiating committee who has taught here for 21 years, explained the reason many senior teachers went along with the change. “I guess we want to be part of a team that’s stable. The revolving door affects all of us. We want (new teachers) to be happy and stick around and buddy up with us to have some continuity.”
Brown said administrators have said “with some frequency” that they weren’t able to hire their first-choice candidates for teaching jobs here because of district pay. “People couldn’t do it, financially.”
The changes leave the district just below median for starting teacher salaries and 10th from the bottom for top salaries, Brown said.
The agreement also increases the amount the district pays toward insurance premiums, from $1,400 to $1,425.
The cash amount of the agreement is less than a $60,000 pay and benefits package the district offered in May that teachers rejected.
Teachers’ union president Lisa Andriesen said the rejected pay scale attached pay inceases to possession of advanced degrees instead of college credits. In a small district such as Haines where teachers must have a range of skills, basing pay on specialized degrees instead of credits wasn’t appropriate, Andriesen said.