Contract raises teacher salaries, gives students more days off.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran June 22, 2007): A headline on Page B1 Thursday was misleading. Students in the Eugene School District will have some additional days off next year due to teacher training and planning days, but they will not lose any instructional time because of a longer school year.

Eugene School District teachers will see substantially bigger paychecks under a three-year contract ratified by the union on Monday and by the school board on Wednesday.

But a portion of the raise carries a price: additional workdays for planning and training, which for students will mean more full- and half-days off during the year and an extra 3 1/2 days in June.

The pact, reached in the wake of the Legislature's approval of a record-breaking $6.245 billion biennial K-12 budget, was the first in memory to win unanimous approval from teachers, said Eugene Education Association Co-President Paul Duchin, a district teacher for nearly 30 years.

"I think members were very satisfied with what was presented, and the bargaining team obviously felt good about it," he said. "We tried to address a number of things - part of it was a fair cost-of-living adjustment that was at least at or above the (Consumer Price Index), and we're right in the ballpark, and we wanted to address some of the workload concerns."

The agreement includes cost-of-living increases in each of the three years: 2.7 percent, 3 percent and 3.25 percent, respectively. It also adds another "longevity" step with a 3 percent increase for two categories of teachers: those with master's degrees and an additional 45 educational credits and those with master's degrees and 90 credits.

District health insurance contributions for a full-time teacher will jump from $888 to $960 in the first year, $985 in the second and $1,025 in the third. The district pro-rates for teachers who work at least half-time.

The additional five-and-a-half work days - one for planning and one for training at the start of the year, three half-days for planning and two half-days for training in the middle of the year and one planning day between semesters - are guaranteed only through the term of the contract, as is another one-and-a-half paid days on which teachers aren't required to report to work.

"We recognize that (district) teachers do a lot of work outside their professional work day, and that's our recognition of that additional work," said Ted Heid, the district's labor relations director.

At the start of what turned out to be difficult negotiations, teachers had asked for 10 such nonreporting paid days; the agreement, which adds paid days but requires teachers work most of them, reflects a compromise.

Duchin said workload has been an enormous issue for teachers in recent years, as squeezed budgets have driven up class sizes. At the same time, teachers have seen a steady increase in the population of high-needs children along with stepped-up accountability for student achievement.

Bargaining was more difficult than in previous years, in part because of a substantial pay raise for building administrators that the teachers' union said broke a mutual agreement to maintain parity among contracts. That set the stage for a subsequent dispute over a survey of Oregon teacher salaries.

Board Chairman Tom Herrmann sat in on the negotiations.

"This was not an easy contract," he said after the board's unanimous vote. "And frankly, it's an extraordinary achievement to get it done in the spring," before the official end of the school year.

Deputy Superintendent Tom Henry, who was on the district bargaining team, noted that the total cost of the contract exceeded school board parameters only slightly.

The ongoing costs amount to about a 14.5 percent increase in total contract cost over the three-year period. While the cost of the additional days - about $4.6 million over three years - exceeded the board's tentative limit for one-time costs, the district will be able to tap $1.8 million to cover training days from the new "school improvement" funds earmarked for specific purposes in the Legislature's K-12 budget, said Susan Fahey, financial operations manager 

The district hasn't yet calculated just how much individual paychecks will grow under the new contract, Fahey said. Total compensation for a Eugene teacher currently ranges from $34,243 for a beginning teacher with only a bachelor's degree to $68,211 for a top-scale teacher. That includes salary, the 6 percent Public Employees Retirement System contributions and, as is the case for teachers hired since July 1998, a district-paid tax-sheltered annuity.