Bargaining Notes 072026

 

The MEA and District negotiating teams met for the second time on Monday, July 20th.

MEA’s team consisted of Pat Barber, Valerie Finnegan, Julie Kerber, Helen King, Brian Kirchberg, Mitcheal Pearl, Bruce Proud, Jon Syre, Evelyn Townsley, and Mercedes Wildman.

Those negotiating on the district’s team were Christina Britton, Willie Clark, Silvana Ianinska, Derek Jensen, Sharon Scarbrough, Rachel Sellers, and Mark West.

Discussions of the amount available for Teacher Salary Increase Allocation (TSIA) dollars continued and Bruce Proud, MEA chief negotiator, raised the issue of the requirement to subtract money for Florida Empowerment Scholarship students from the district’s allocation. He said that he can find no reference to that in any documents and other districts that do not include those dollars in their discussions.

The district’s chief negotiator, Mark West, said that it is part of the bigger context. It doesn’t matter in the end because FES students TSIA dollars are coming out. He went on to say that we need the total amount of dollars we get from the state goes to teachers.

The percentage of total dollars for TSIA is 1.06%.

The district has now identified 1078 people who qualify. The new amount per teacher will be $2400 including benefits which will mean the amount of the increase will be $1968.

Bruce listed issues that MEA intends to address in negotiations including performance pay, degrees supplements, retention and employees that are being excluded from the TSIA money as well as increasing supplements.   We are asking if it is the intent of the district to carve out individuals and that there are others who are excluded.

For the paras MEA needs to address compression on the schedule.  Those are all financial issues.  We have concerns regarding paras’ duties … extra duties and doing others’ jobs plus other minimal language that needs updating to keep up with the world. In addition, this is a full book, and we have duration clause and the length of the contract. 

The district presented a proposal which included agreement to continue to pay newly qualified teachers the 16+ and the 25+ retention/longevity supplements, no changes to the supplement schedule, the proposal for the referendum supplement was that the teacher and para supplements remain the same as they have been the last two year and the following for salary increases. Teacher = $3,901,703 – (2,592,845 TSIA) = 1,308,858;    Para = $148,129 which equals Step Increase.  In addition, proposed changes from the committee for a Health Insurance Rate Increase of 10% (Additional 10% Employer premium and additional 10% Employee premium). and Potential Plan Design Changes that equate to  0.9% of premium.

There have been no agreements reached.