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MEDIATION RESULTS IN TENTATIVE AGREEMENT 8/1/08
After
three days of mediation (in June) with the assistance of a federal
mediator, a tentative agreement was reached for a new three year
Master Agreement between AEA and Aurora Public Schools. This agreement
concludes what is likely the most difficult round of negotiations
AEA has seen in many years. The cause of these difficulties is
the problematic situation District finances are in due to enrollment
decline over the past two years and anticipated to continue next
year. Bargaining Teams had concluded many agreements before mediation
and only addressed compensation in Article 11 and workload issues
in Article 13 in the mediation process. Here's a review of the
agreements in these two areas.
ARTICLE
11 - COMPENSATION: Because the District's budget deficit leaves
very little revenue to fund a general salary increase (GSI), the
bargaining teams agreed to make any GSI dependent on a successful
passage of a mill levy election this fall. On passage of a mill
levy election employees will receive a 2 percent increase on their
base pay within the APS salary schedule effective January 1, 2009
but retroactive to the beginning of the 2008-09 contract year.
Teachers will also, of course, receive their step and lane increase
on the salary schedule. The APS school board has already approved
preliminary investigation of a mill levy election and is scheduled
to act on final approval of an election in August. With a successful
passage of the election, teachers would begin to receive the salary
increase in their January paychecks.
ARTICLE
13 - WORKLOAD: One of the primary goals of the AEA Bargaining
Team this year was to positively restructure workload rules as
presently outlined in Article 13. We believe the bargained changes
address this goal. Present language includes 30 minutes of teacher
determined planning along with other non-contact time that is
intended for planning, but is subject to many other workload constraints,
such as, coaching, team planning, assessments, etc. Administrators
can also require attendance at meetings or "Professional Learning"
as long as it does not consume more than 20% of the non-contact
time.
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New
language will merge the 30 minutes of "teacher directed" time
into overall non-contact time, but also state that all of this
non-contact time is teacher directed except for 30 percent of
this total time which can be used for meetings, professional learning,
coaching, etc. At the elementary level instead of having a 60
minute block of time split up before and after the school day,
there will be a 90 minute block of time that can be split up before
and after school. In reality the extra 30 minutes is making up
for the previous 30 minute "teacher directed" block that stood
separate in the contract. The AEA bargaining team believes this
new language will help to address some of the workload concerns
we heard loud and clear last year and in years past by requiring
that teachers will determine the use of 70 percent of their non-contact
time during the work day.
AEA
Board Directors and Association Representatives will have an opportunity
to hear specifics about the tentative agreement from mediation,
as well as review the language of the tentative agreements from
negotiations on August 11th at 4:30 in Conference Room C at the
Admin Building. AEA will hold a special Board Director/AR meeting
that afternoon. As always AEA members will be welcome to attend.
If the AEA Board of Directors and Association Reps recommend the
tentative agreement to our membership that afternoon, the ratification
vote will begin on August 12th and conclude on August 19th. The
results of the ratification vote will be communicated to the APS
Board of Education that evening.
To
see the contract articles agreed to in regular negotiations, click
here.
Pilot Schools Initiative Getting Lots
of Attention
Last October AEA & APS worked in collaboration to negotiate
an innovative idea called Pilot schools. Pilot schools originated
in Boston over 10 years ago as a collaborative effort between the
union, district and school committee, primarily to stem the tide
of charter schools. Aurora's first Pilot school will be William
Smith, slated to open next fall as a small expeditionary learning
high school. Three other letters of intent have been submitted to
the Joint Steering Committee. Read more
about Pilot schools…… |
