District, teachers far apart on pay.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

There's no argument that Eugene School District finances are in better shape than they've been in years.

The governor's funding proposal for schools is 18 percent higher than the current biennium's, and the district's own local property tax levy has generated millions more than originally anticipated, thanks to Eugene's humming real estate market.

But when it comes to where to invest the dollars in the next couple of years, the district administration and teachers' union see things differently.

Representatives from the two sides have been bargaining a contract since February, but with just a few weeks left before the current two-year pact expires, the big issues - nearly all of them related to compensation - remain unresolved.

Teachers say they've been patient for years and it's time for the district to pony up - especially in light of hefty raises given to administrators in 2005 in compensation for an increased workload.

"We have heard over and over again in past bargaining sessions that if money were only available, teachers and specialists would receive a reasonable salary increase," Paul Duchin, co-president of the Eugene Education Association, said in a statement read to the school board last Wednesday and again to bargaining teams and an audience of five dozen teachers on Thursday. "Well, money is now definitely available."

But district administrators say the teachers' demands are unrealistic. They say the demands would deplete reserves they've been directed by the budget committee to save for a rainy day and would, in all likelihood, necessitate staff cuts.

"We're still a long ways apart on the money issues," said Ted Heid, the district's labor relations director, though he added that the EEA's latest proposal - which dropped a costly demand aimed at lowering class sizes by hiring a slew of new teachers - at least opens the door for discussion.

The administration's initial proposal called for salary increases of 2.1 percent in each of the two years - an offer that rankled teachers, Duchin said. A subsequent proposal raised it to 2.25 percent.

In their latest proposal, presented last Thursday, teachers seek to alter the salary schedule, with the net effect being to raise salaries an average of 4.1 percent in the first year, according to district calculations, with a 3.5 percent increase the second year. In addition, they want an increase in longevity pay.

They're also asking that teachers be eligible to claim up to eight days of additional pay, aimed at easing the workload burden and compensating for the unpaid hours teachers log on weekends, evenings and breaks.

"If you're not going to reduce class size, you at least need to compensate people," Duchin said.

While Eugene teachers were granted similar "extended contract" pay equivalent to five or six days back in the late 1980s, Heid said he knows of no district that currently pays teachers for days outside the school-year work calendar.

Unless the two sides can resolve their differences in one of three scheduled daylong meetings with a facilitator in June, it's likely that teachers will begin next school year without a contract. While Heid said the district bargaining team is willing to meet over the summer, Duchin said the EEA is not.

It's hardly unusual for labor negotiations to drag on, nor for contracts to expire before a deal is struck. But this round of bargaining started off on an especially sour note as far as teachers are concerned. They say the district's handling of administrator pay raises - approved by the school board in January 2006 and retroactive to July 2005 - cast a cloud from the start, one that darkened after a dispute over a subsequent market analysis of teacher salaries.

Citing a need to attract and retain high-caliber school leaders in an increasingly competitive marketplace, the district granted building administrators and their assistants raises that ranged from 6.3 percent to almost 15 percent per year over two years. (District officials have corrected previous information indicating that one-year increases could be as high as 18 percent.) The boost was biggest for elementary principals, who had an extra 16 days added to their work calendar.

"We do believe the administrators deserved to get a pay increase," said Merri Steele, EEA co-president and bargaining chairwoman. "But we believe we do, too."

At the behest of teachers, the district commissioned a market survey of teacher salaries, which showed that Eugene ranked fourth among 12 districts examined for both entry-level and maximum salaries.

But the two sides disagreed on the results. Teachers say they and district administrators initially agreed on which districts would be part of the survey, but teachers charge that administrators later excluded some and added others. They also calculated compensation in a way that made it appear that some teachers earn more than they do, according to the EEA.

"It has skewed the results so much that as far as we're concerned it's irrelevant," Duchin said.

Administrators say the survey was fair. For example, the EEA says it's disingenuous to include a yearly tax-sheltered annuity in the calculations for top-scale teachers because only one in nine receives it. District administrators disagreed.

"It's part of the compensation package," Heid said. "You don't just pick certain teachers (to include or exclude), you take it all."

Only teachers hired since July 1998 - slightly more than half of the district's 1,006 teachers - are eligible to receive the annuity, which means that few at top scale currently get it.

In contrast to recent approaches, the EEA this time opted against a collaborative bargaining process, which involves first identifying common interests and goals before getting down to the nitty-gritty. Instead, the two sides are bargaining with a traditional approach, in which each typically comes to the table with proposals that initially look very different.