001Thank you for uh attending our work session. I will call the meeting to order at 6 o'clock. Uh we will begin with the public comment to the board. This is the point in our board meeting where our public can um address items pertinent to our agenda uh for this meeting. Uh no more than three minutes and not mention any teachers or students by name. Do we have any public comment? >> Nope. >> We do not. We'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is item number three new business uh discussion of tenative agreement with the Avon Federation of Teachers. Dr. Windam. >> Thank you, Mrs. Woodward. Uh we typically do this part of the contract negotiations process at our working session in October uh when we're also reviewing the budget adoption. But
002we delayed this uh so that we could get through the referendum renewal vote that happened yesterday um and then make decisions about uh teacher compensation and our teacher contract. So I appreciate uh our teachers union is represented here today with Mrs. Taylor, but I appreciate their flexibility and understanding that we needed to uh get through that referendum and and see um how our community felt about continuing the referendum since one of the three tenants of our 2018 referendum is competitive teacher compensation and we certainly wanted to continue that in uh the referendum renewal. So, I will walk you through um some information here about this tenative agreement. Um this process starts for us each year at the uh usually in August. Um we held our first public hearing at a school board meeting in August
003August 25th. State law says you can't begin formal bargaining until September 15th and then we held four uh formal negotiations meetings between our administration and our teachers union representatives. Um that all led us uh our goal is always to have uh the contract in a draft form before fall break. Uh so we were able to do that. We posted the tenative agreement on our website with a notice of this evening's meeting. Um and then that gets us to uh tonight. Then uh our teachers union will share information uh this evening following this meeting with uh their membership so that they are equipped to vote on the contract uh from the AFT members. That gets us to our November 10th board meeting next Monday uh at which time we'll hold another public hearing before we bring
004the contract to you for ratification uh so that we can hit the state deadline of November 15th. So, it is really a three-month process um to meet all the state requirements and um have the interactive dialogue that we have with our teachers union. Um I also want to give a some praise to our negotiations team. Um we have great representation on our negotiations team and Mrs. Woodward and I were just talking about this last night. We have a long history of such a great relationship with our teachers union and some of these individuals that are listed here have been uh this is my now ninth year serving on the negotiations team and some of these teachers have been on the team longer than I have uh and so they are wellversed in our contract and
005how we approach compensation and it's just a very collaborative group uh that that we get to work with and then of course Mrs. Glass and Mrs. Williams um work with me uh to represent the administration. So uh what you have before you is a summary of the proposed teacher salary increases in this uh compensation model. All eligible teachers would receive an increase to their base salary. Uh teachers with Avon experience will receive an additional increase in base salary based on their years of teaching experience here which is similar to how we have approached this in uh previous contracts over the last few years. And then teachers at the top of our salary range uh would receive a one-time stipen uh in addition to that $1,400 increase if if they were eligible. This does increase our
006starting teacher pay to $54,000 uh which is uh very competitive and you'll see that here in just a moment. Uh so that equates to an average of a 2.4% increase for our eligible teachers. Eligible meaning they worked at least 120 days last year and their evaluation was effective or highly effective. >> Quick question on that. Uh, do we know what percentage of the teachers will be eligible for the $1,400 increase because they were effective or highly effective? >> It would be over 90%. Sheila, do you have that? Any information on that? Yeah. And um also to understand so a a new teacher this year who would therefor have had been rated as highly effective last year would not would well they did not get a rating last year. So from they would not be eligible.
007>> Correct. Y >> not from you. It has to be an Avon. >> Correct. If they were rated as effective or highly effective from a neighboring school district that would not count. >> Does not apply. Yep. Um the o the the only thing would be with our starting teacher pay. those individuals would receive an increase to get them to that start because that that would be an increase from what we told them their contract was going to be when we hired them. So, they would get that increase to our new starting pay without an evaluation, but everyone else would have to have an evaluation. >> And I don't want to mix uh apples and oranges here because I might be so apologies in advance. I know that the state has come up with a new
008plan for determination of the bonus structure. is that dip and that's for my my understanding is this school year going forward not last school year but so we'll have to deal with that separately next year. >> No, you really don't. That's a great question. So that that is really what you're talking about is the teacher appreciation grant stipens and in the past for years now the state has given schools a pot of money that we distributed evenly among all of our effective and highly effective teachers. the board really didn't have to take any action on that because the state law said this is the state said this is how it has to be dispersed. It didn't require schoolboard action. Now what the legislature did is they scrapped that plan that we've been operating under and
009now there's a new teacher appreciation grant stipen that is intended to be more competitive because they believe more competition will make teachers perform better and it's limited to the top 20% of Indiana teachers. So, uh, we just had a meeting this afternoon with our discussions rep reps from the the teachers union, and this was the topic we spent the most amount of time on. But again, the state has prescribed the process that has to be followed. It really wouldn't probably require board action because it's been so dictated either by legislation or the Indiana Department of Education. But for next year, I know I'm getting the cart before the horse, but for next year, if we wanted to come up with a similar plan to this and we're using the effective, highly effective paradigm, then that
010could be a little skewed if there's only going to be 20%. >> No, we would still do our evaluations the same way. And we we just changed we just updated our evaluation system last year. Um, and so the state now now says you don't even have to evaluate teachers in those four categories. and we weren't willing to change our evaluation process. That teacher appreciation grant stipened process is totally separate and outside of the teacher contract. >> So we'll every year we have to do this whole process by November 15th and then the state also kind of has had this side process of teacher appreciation grant stipens. In the past teachers got those funds in December. Now, they won't get them until probably April or even May. Yeah. And they're much larger stipen amounts. And so
011that's why we're working closely with our teachers union because it's it's a very different process. Sheila Okay. So, I don't think our public could hear that, Sheila. So I think what you said was 85% uh will receive what was the 95% >> 94% I'm sorry >> 85% of our teachers that are rated effective or highly effective will get a raise. >> 94% of our teachers which includes those that are being bumped to the minimum will be receiving a raise. Okay, thank you. Um, so just to clarify a couple of things. One is that the um tenative the teachers contract tenative agreement summary that's in our um packet uh reflects a 2.5% um average base salary increase. This says 2.4 >> the 2.4% is the correct amount. >> Okay. So that will need to be changed.
012address. >> Um, the bring to minimum will affect anyone that was hired in 2025 at the old rate and they will be immediately brought to minimum of 54. >> Correct. Once >> on the next pay cycle once we ratify. >> Okay. Even though there wouldn't have been any teachers hired at that newer rate, they're brought to minimum at that time. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. because this contract technically takes effect July one, but we'll have to go back retro to July one, >> right? Okay. Um, so when you do that, when you do retroactive to July the 1st, do you give that in a lump sum? >> The retro part is lump and then the the remaining parts get distributed over the remaining pays. >> Um, just a technical question, Kristen, do you do
013that in two checks or one check? Would they receive their regular new pay on a regular check and then you do the retroactive on that same check or a different check? Okay, same check. you may want to check [laughter] that affects taxation negatively and so putting it on a separate check gives them the benefit of additional net because the taxation is different on retro. So just I we can talk more about that but that would be to the teachers benefit and would have no negative effect on the school corporation. Um, and then the last question I had was a really good one and oh, I know what it was. So, um, when teachers are contemplating retirement, um, I'm saying no, no, don't don't retire. Um, it is a look back period of three years or
014five years. Five. Okay. So those teachers with Avon experience that or teachers that are at the top of their salary range that look back period does not include any stipend in the contemplation of their last five years or is it the highest of the last five years? >> The average of the highest of their last five years. >> The average of the highest of their last five years. Okay. But does not include any stipen amounts. It has to be base >> stipens included in that calculation. Do you know? I think they are. >> It's your total wages. >> Oh, it's total wages. Okay. Good. Good. Thanks. That answered that question. >> Your highest five years. Yeah. Typically, >> yeah, that's Yes. Um, that's how most pension plans work is that it's the it's the highest
015five years of earning, not necessarily your last five. I mean, it stands to reason that it is, but if you, for some reason, took a demotion or um took something um off of your plate and that wasn't in your last five years, that would make sense. You step back from a role. Okay. Turn your mic on. >> Do they still pay teachers for unused sick days? No, >> that is gone now. >> Correct. That's been gone for several years. >> Yeah, >> it was really and it was because it was hard to budget for and hard to plan for and so that has kind of phased out of many contracts over time. So we always look at our comparison uh schools and um look at how our proposed contract compares. Uh you can see here
016our starting teacher pay uh has really made some some great gains and several of our comparison schools did not give any increase to starting teacher pay this year. Uh and we were able to do that again thanks to our referendum. Prior to 2018, Avon was the second lowest on this list. And we've worked our way up to the second highest. And we've said all along, we don't have to be the top, but we need to be com competitive. And we've been able to do that um here with this contract. Um at the top of the scale, uh you'll see that um again, prior to 2018, we were the lowest in this com comparison group. We have worked our way um up in that list, continued to make progress in this area, but our focus in
017our contracts for the last few years as a result of the referendum was really teachers more in that midcareer phase where we had a lot of compression. uh and we have been able to work on that over the last few years and have made a lot of progress at that mid uh phase of teacher careers and um but we were again pleased that we've made some made progress here and some districts are just giving stipens this year to teachers at the top of their scale and we are able to give an addition to the base uh that many of our uh comparison schools are not able to do this year. You'll see some other language um in the contract that's been changed. We've updated some language with the sick leave bank. Um some extracurricular stipens
018were updated. If you remember last year's contract, we had two different sections of the extracurricular stipens because we had to have one part that was the old structure K4 elementaryaries, intermediate schools, middle schools. Now, in this contract, you'll see the the entire structure has been changed to reflect our current reality, the K5 and 68 structure. Um, and so there were we spent a lot of time, and by we, I mean Kristen spent a lot of time looking over our extracurricular stipens to make sure that they were updated to reflect this new structure. Um, we did add uh in some years there's a lot of changes to our ECA structure. This year, the changes were very minimal. Um, we did add unified flag football uh at Avon High School, which is an IHSAA sanctioned sport and
019is incredible to watch happen. If you ever get a chance to go to a unified flag football, that those are um high school students with disabilities that are buddied up with high school students that are there as buddies. And the whole the rules of the football game are totally different. You have to work with your buddy to catch a ball and throw a ball and score a touchdown. It is really fun to watch. So, it's it's neat to see that. Um, we removed a K5 music coordinator stipen that was no longer needed. And then, like I said, we restructured some of our middle school stipens basically around the the uh reconfiguration and the opening of Middle School West. >> Have a quick question about our ECA stipens. Do we do any research just the surrounding
020districts and are we pretty competitive in that matter? We don't do it every year. U and part of partially is because there are so many stipens it would and every school does it differently um that it is it would be a monumental task to do but every few years we will look at different stipens. So couple years ago, we focused heavily on athletic stipens and we did a whole market comparison of were our coaches paid competitively, how many assistants did the different sports have. A couple years prior to that, we did a big reflection on or big study on performing arts and were we competitive with performing arts. Um, you know, one of the challenges that we always face is um we we always try to put information or put salary increases into teachers base
021salaries. Some years were able to increase ECAs and some years were not. And so this year we felt like we didn't grow as many students as we were hoping to to grow. Um and so we didn't have as many funds as we thought we were going to have. And so we wanted to put the available dollars into base salary increases that impact every teacher. And so we were not able to give an acrosstheboard raise to ECAs. Um, and I doubt that many of our competitors are going to be able to do that either when you look at the climate in Indiana right now. Um, but that's one of those things where we can't do that year over year over year because then we do fall behind. So we always try to kind of monitor that.
022>> For the ECA, do you have like groups that monitor that or like look for the need and places we can cut back on or how is that on. >> So, we actually the the the reconfiguration that we did going into this school year was a great opportunity for us to look at every ECA at the K8 level. And um we found a lot of areas that we're like, well, that's been in our contract for a long time. Do is that working that way? and we made a lot of changes based off of just that analysis that that reconfiguration forced us to do but we probably should have have done earlier. But um you know stipens that were at the intermediates that we did no longer needed obviously because we don't have intermediate schools. But
023then just also really looking at especially with three middle schools, there were some ways some areas we were able to just do one stipend that is making sure that that that is happening across all three schools. And that saved us money from not having to have a stipend at each of the three schools. So I would say K8 is probably about as zeroed in as it's been in a long long time because of that work. Um, can you give us a brief summary? It talks about the language added to clarify the sick leave bank. Can you give us more detail on that? >> I'm going to let Mrs. Williams do that. It was really, it was really primarily just um instead of just saying stick bake um uh in the narrative, it talks about catastrophic
024illness. Um just because we were getting some um confusion as people were as people were looking at it like if you have the flu and you have sick time and that that's not really what we're looking for. There are criteria which is already established. You have to exhaust all your paid time off and go into four unpaid days. um provide medical documentation and re review it as a committee. So, it really um was a catastrophic illness. And then we kind of talked through some examples of what that might be. It's not an exhaustive list. Um but then it provides some examples of that just to provide a little context for the the teachers of when it would be applicable. Thank you. Uh board members, other questions or comments? Do the teachers get >> nine nine
025sick days and four personal? >> Thank you. >> Other questions? Um there is no need for um ratification of this. We don't have to uh board approve it. But I I will just say that um number one, I salute our decision to wait until after our successful referendum um because I feel like the optics were right, but also the strategy was right in doing that. Um, and just my delight once again at a successful referendum, which means that we can continue to look at our teacher compensation, uh, make sure that we're competitive with peers, but also just our great teachers in Avon deserve the very best that we can give them. Um and it's always um gratifying to know that uh while other school districts may struggle with their um administration slashteer um union negotiation
026that we have a long history in Avon of being fully transparent um of taking care of our teachers and the fact that we move forward together is just a um it's a delight. light. So, thank you for the work on this, everyone's work in getting us to this point. Um, and I'm delighted that um we're able to um increase our starting pay and also begin to take care of our teachers at the top of the scale. Great work. Other comments? If not, we'll adjourn the meeting at