After eight months of teacher contract negotiations, on May 2 the Manhattan Beach Unified School District and the Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Association reached a tentative agreement regarding teacher contracts.
The agreement includes a salary increase of 5 percent, mandatory professional development for Common Core standards and the introduction of a health benefits sub-committee to determine available options regarding health care. All members of MBUTA and the MBUSD Board of Trustees must ratify the agreement on June 30 for it to affect teacher contracts next year.
“We needed to reach this agreement or it would continue to be prolonged, so we are quite pleased that this part is done,” MBUTA president Shawn Chen said.
The parties both agreed upon a 5 percent salary raise, as MBUSD last proposed a 4 percent raise and the original MBUTA proposal contract included a 6 percent salary raise.
“We negotiated together to accept the proposal, so it has compromises on both sides,” Chen said.
In addition to salary, MBUTA and MBUSD negotiated health and welfare benefits. The decided to continue the 80/20 health and welfare plan, in which 80 percent of benefits are spent on health care and 20 percent on welfare, as well as introduce a health benefits sub-committee to recommend health care options to the negotiation teams. The sub-committee, comprised of two MBUTA members, two classified workers and two district workers, aims to reduce health benefit costs by a minimum of 1 percent.
“Health insurance today is certainly a concern for both both the district and the teachers, so we want to examine all the options available to us,” MBUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews said.
The contract also included an additional four mandatory professional development days for the 2014-15 school year. These days will be paid at teachers’ full daily rate, the daily rate they are paid on an average school day, and will end at the end of the 2014-15 school year.
“We are very excited about the mandatory professional development days as this time will be necessary to help prepare all teachers for the Common Core,” Deputy Superintendent Rick Bagley said.
The current teacher evaluation system will become permanent, though subject to modifications by the teacher evaluation committee. It was also decided that fourth and fifth grade teachers will have an three additional hours a month of preparation time. Lastly, stipend salaries, teaching rates for outside of the classroom, are set to be raised to $39 an hour as opposed to the previous $38 an hour.
According to Chen, MBUTA believes that the introduction of a favorable proposal was in response to the parent complaints at the April 13 school board meeting.
“We feel this outcome was a direct result of the community involvement and the support we received from parents, of which we are very appreciative,” Chen said.
Negotiations will be over for the current school year once the agreement is ratified, and next year they will negotiate items for upcoming years.
“All in all, both parties came away with some but not all of what they initially proposed back in September,” Bagley said.
According to Chen, Mira Costa teachers will reopen their doors to students during lunch and continue other unpaid services once the contract is approved.
“Pressure gets lowered after an agreement gets made and so I’m hopeful that now we will be able to go back to the business of helping students and supporting our great teachers in the classroom,” Matthews said.
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