001ready all right good afternoon um i welcome all of us and it's it's an eclectic array of folk that we have here um i welcome you all to our special school board meeting here in the terrace room we have three of our school board members and then online we have another three so i do appreciate everyone making an effort to come together for this very special school board meeting we also have dr roberts online and then sitting at our table for the first time we have dr pleek and chad phillips so thank you all very very much and notifying that we have six of us here we do indeed have a quorum so i get to call this meeting to order we are here for one uh item only and a very exciting and important
002one and that is to discuss our 2021-2023 tentative agreement between our school corporation and columbus educators association so i will turn to who is starting the discussion off good evening and thanks for for having us this evening it is a very special board meeting joined by amy london our kind of co-lead for the cea for with bargaining during this last session and want to thank her and her team for all their work along with thank you it's not clicker's not going to work today helps if i turn it on there we go so it's on i just got it thank you i just had to turn on right this process this year was probably i think one of the most collaborative and efficient bargaining processes that we've done together as a team started back in
003may with informal meetings even before the school year was out last school year and continued through the solution that the legislature created where there wasn't a problem with a public input session back in september that we haven't had anyone attend yet but then formal bargaining began in the middle of september and we reached our tentative agreement just there at the beginning of october continue then i'll let amy take over from there so once we reached our tentative agreement we had informal or informational meetings with our members that was on october 7th we had almost 100 members show up we offered it at two different times in the auditorium at north and we shared this presentation with them um and then we also when they left gave them an individual salary sheet so they could see
004exactly how much they made last year what they'll make this year next year and then their referendum amount we also included fica turf their 401 accounts to show them what else bcsc contributes to them as an employee so that's been very helpful i sent out an explanation for that to them our members are going to vote on thursday and friday of this week and they're going to do that electronically this will be the first time we voted i believe electronically for our contract so we voted electronically for other things but not for the contract yet and then provided that it passes we will then anticipate a vote from you on monday of next week at your scheduled board meeting oh and we also one of the other things we did to help was after that
005meeting on the seventh i sent out a survey for members to be able to reply with questions so we can have those things off and answer things so nobody had any misconceptions or misunderstood something that way they were sure to have all the information so they could make the vote that they felt was needed and we want to thank the members of both bargaining teams on the ca side you see the names listed there and bcsc side and i think probably this is one of the reasons that this the whole process of bargaining this year was efficient and productive and collaborative because this is probably um the fifth or even sixth year that these teams have mostly been together and so we're getting used to working with one another getting better each time that we
006do this amy mentioned the individual salary sheets i guess the first time that that they have done that but we also collaborated back and forth to make sure that every single one of those we agreed with what those sheets were saying before they were handed out and so we helped with the information but it came from cea helping you know members feel like they could trust both of us and they knew what the information was was valid so we appreciate the the work that the folks on the screen the names on the screen what all those folks did plus both teams had people behind the scenes working on committees doing research and things like that so thanks to everyone involved in the bargaining process the other reason this went really well is that we fed
007everybody this time we had food every time i think oh okay and i too have to thank the all both teams from uh each side for bargaining everybody worked really hard so um so this is the slide that talks just about where we've been and and you know you can you can see it here um the the third but our bullet down talks about the master's degree and i just want to clarify that was a one-time step that we did we i've had some members ask me about that if that was part of this year and that was something we did in the past and you can see our percentages of our votes there um for the last time and then our average of our increases and when we start to share with you our
008average increase for these these coming two years you'll see the difference so i'm happy to say our health trust reserves have stabilized and then we started our referendum as you know in january of 2021 for folks and so that's been good and then the added covid and work related days along with the calendar changes that i think are on your agenda for your next board meeting have been a big big help as well and then our last part where we've made class sizes smaller because we've restored our staffing levels has been a good place that we've been and and making sure that we can do what we can for kids with that and now on to the the tentative agreement there's several slides that cover mainly the compensation related portion of the tenant agreement which
009is obviously you know the most prominent part of the collective bargaining agreement and then some other items as well this is this slide here describes the first year of the agreement we do have a tentative agreement for two years the first year of the agreement the salary schedule changes the bottom starting salaries changes from 39.065 to 42 000. that's a difference of 2935 essentially year one if you want to boil it down make it very simple every teacher with the exception of those that are those handful of teachers that are above the scale are receiving an increase of twenty nine hundred and thirty five dollars the bottom of the scale shifts 2935 the top shifts 2935 and so everyone moves along there so that each step along the way the steps between each the the
010distance the dollar amount between each step on the scale remains 1200 dollars in year one of the agreement the top of the scale again increases the 2935 dollars there are just nine teachers remaining a few years ago when we were bargaining we had i think it was 121 teachers that were above the scale somewhere they have each year we've gotten each of those kind of captured back in the scale this will be the last year as those remaining nine teachers move on to the top of the scale and those are the only teachers that don't receive the 2935 dollars they receive some distance between i think it's as low as 400 and as high as close to 2935 the maximum salary in year one and also increases from the 85 000 to 87 935 and
011that's with the referendum you know the top of the scale before the referendum is 80 400 but with referendum increases the top of the scale changes to the 87 935 all of those increases will be retroactive to the beginning of this contract year for teachers and that's an average for those teachers again not including referendum dollars but it's an average increase of six percent in year one and like like amy said looking back at our prior contracts thanks to the dramatic increase in per pupil support from the state we're seeing increases that are more along the lines of what we've hoped for for years um just a quick add to that the chad and i have talked and we're anticipating it being the second pay in november for the retroactive pay that's mentioned there on
012the bottom so and a quick funny story those nine teachers some of them are members that had come to me and said it looks like i must be one of those nine people i'm not that old am i or and and we also figured out that most a lot of them were in special ed so that that said a lot about to me at least as a special ed teacher so i thought that was cool um so for the second year of the contract um our starting salary goes from 42 000 to 44.6 which is a 2600 increase and our steps are going to increase from 1200 to 1500 and i'm excited to say we have made the steps reduced to them from 33 to 27 steps we've tried for a long time to see
013how we can reduce those steps and maximize our dollars for our teachers and this year we were able to do that and so i'm real happy to see that it's a minimum increase for all teachers on the schedule of 2600 and the changes in the steps it's requiring them people to have new placements so our scale never has been well i'm at year three so i'm going to count three years three steps down um it's it's not it's not based on that and so um it has changed what that looks like for folks and so we've had a lot of conversation with members about if it's not based on years then if i'm here in the first year of the contract then why am i here in the second and we've talked about how it's
014not saying that you're not get it you're you're not getting you're not missing any money on there it's just because we had to reduce steps it's where it places you so um folks have have done a nice job of understanding that and um working through that and and that was one of those reasons we had that survey and it was a oh moment so that was a good thing the last part about the 90 the referendum maximum with that it's going to go from 87.935 to 90 000 and i'm pretty excited about that because to say you're a teacher in bcsc and you can make it potentially 90 000 that's that starts to put teachers up there with folks who have degrees that are similar to ours who are professionals so um that's really good
015and and i'm sorry i missed there our scale increases from eighty thousand four hundred to eighty three six hundred so a thirty two hundred dollar increase so that's an average of six point one um so if you add the two minimums up a teacher over those two years could make uh 5 increase is what the base minimum would be adding those two amounts up so i thought that was a really good um scale for this year the other thing that the bargaining team we're already thinking about next time and talked about once we have this nice scale with 27 steps in the future we really just need to start focusing then on taking steps and moving steps on that scale so i'm hoping that will make it even easier when we bargain our next contract
016so and speaking of that scale the next slide demonstrates again like amy mentioned these don't represent years of experience there could be a teacher on line six that that has nine years of experience or a teacher online 12 you know that has seven years of experience it just depends on where you were placed when you're hired and what year you were hired and any time that you change the number of steps in a scale everyone's going to get shuffled to the you know to the next step that's most appropriate for them and that's where the minimum of twenty six hundred dollar increase comes in year two you set uh a scale where the teacher moves to the next step and if that's not twenty six hundred dollars then they move to the next step after
017that and so the the left hand side shows the the 21-22 proposed teacher salary schedule and then in year two you can see it's dramatically shorter and so that's the reduction to 27. one of the things that i'm most excited about is we didn't put it on the screen because we didn't want to mislead anybody about the you know the potential but if you're a new teacher and you look at this this 2223 schedule you can go down and count to your sixth year and say i'm going to make five thousand dollars more to that than that thanks to the referendum you go down to step 11 and i'm going to make an additional 5 000 thanks to the referendum and so in 22 years in your 22nd year of teaching using this scale the
018proposed 2223 scale and the a new teacher could get hired in in their 22nd year they could hit that 90 000 maximum and that's a place where you know we str we strive to be as competitive we can with not only other districts but like amy said other professions and and make it look at a traffic an attractive profession to a high performing student coming out of high school or out of college considering education has a potential for them and speaking of the referendum be remiss if we didn't mention you know our appreciation to the public for passing that just a year and a half ago or so and and what it allows us to do while that scale did not show on the last slide those referendum dollars in there they make a massive
019difference for our teachers and so the point system that we have in place today the 5 10 and 15 would remain the same under this agreement [Laughter] just that just to clarify the point system like chad said it's after they complete the 5 10 and 15 year amounts then the following year they will get that that amount on there all right so other compensation changes so in the back of our contract we have our appendix b and c and in those um this this year they get a six percent increase and next year they get a six percent increase that's on an average that's uh they get a six percent increase each time so that includes things like our coordinators and our band directors choir directors coaches so that is a nice increase for them
020one that we've not seen for quite some time so we've also increased our curriculum rate and covering another teacher's class and the best supervision at the secondary levels to 30 an hour and that's going to start in january um and then until then though it'll still remain the twenty dollars before i move on from this i'll just mention like amy listed some of the folks who filled these appendix b and c which are basically our co-curricular positions and extra curricular positions and the six percent each year is a terrific terrific increase for them but we know that many of those coaches work for less than a dollar an hour and you work it out by by hourly rates and the amount of time they put in out there with students on the banned fields that
021you see all summer long and so this is a a good thing we can do to increase that appendix b and c uh at a similar rate that the salaries increase other non-compensation items that are included again this is a two-year agreement that we're proposing the language would reopen the contract next fall and on september 15th when we can bargain again if both parties agree that it's necessary or if the health trust recommends changes that are needed due to some change in the market we also are proposing tomorrow the health trust meets and we'll we'll formalize this but dental premiums would incr i'm sorry decrease by five percent the dental reserves have reached a point to their about 60 percent of annual expected expenses and so this is just to start slowing down that growth
022in those reserves that is more than what is necessary and the health trust has agreed to this as well and has been made aware of it we've discussed it at prior meetings before bargaining it's not technically a bargain item the premiums are not but it is an important item that we discussed with both cea and the health trust we also are doing something that the private sector has been doing for a long time and that's default enrollment in the 403 b so any teachers after this year starting next year any teachers hired would be enrolled at three percent of their their salary going into a 403 b which then is matched by the district at 3 percent into an investment account they would have to as opposed to have having teachers um opt in they
023would have to opt out in writing if they wanted to opt out and so it's just making what uh is good practice in the private sector and bringing it into our corporation we also made parental and adoptive leave consistent across all types of leave so both maternity paternity and adoptive leave would all be 30 days or six weeks and then a minor change of uh notifying us of a request to have summer pay off uh to january one from i believe it was sometime way early in august for some reason so those are some of the non-compensation items and here's some of the details on appendix b and c as well so in our appendix b this is um all of our folks who aren't coaches and perhaps have to work with or work with
024the athletics so we added a pbis committee lead so our positive behavior support that we provide in bcsc we added a position there so that person can get a 1 223 stipend for schools that have more than 700 or less more than 700 students excuse me and 818 dollars for schools with less than 700 students our middle school special education coordinator their stipend was just was very minimal and the amount of work in the last few years they've been asked to do has has increased with the things that we need to do for kids so we've got them a nice stipend of 2453 there and our high school choral director was able to say you know i'm this is how much i'm doing and this is equal to what i see band directors doing can
025we talk about making my stipend that and so we were able to do that so they're now making 5 316 for that and our high school special ed coordinators are going from five days to eight days um that was something they had in the past and and now we've got that back to eight days but all of these four things here and as well as the adoptive leave on the previous slide were things that our members and ca had told us that they were interested in and so we brought those things to the table so we appreciate their communication with us of saying these are the things we would like to see so it's awesome that we were able to get that info and then share it with admin and collaborate on that so we
026can have things that our teachers are looking for and these appendix b and c changes it is very rare that we make changes to appendix b and c because every change you make um it's usually not a subtraction right you're usually adding something and so it's a rare year that we have enough new money from the state to apply both to salary schedules and then look at appendix b and c and meet some of the needs of folks that said you know what let's make some things more consistent um or at least try to do our best the best we can at rewarding folks for the work that they do and so those are the appendix b changes that amy just listed off appendix c we just have two changes proposed one would take the
027middle school athletic directors and move them from they were called activity directors and they were on appendix b for some reason but it's been decades since they were the position was such that it was an activities director they do work very similar to that of the high school assistant athletic directors and so we put them on the same line for a stipend as the high school assistant athletic directors takes it from around 3 600 to somewhere around 10 000 for the work that they do and then the second proposed change to appendix c this is one that has been talked about for a very long time at the elementary basketball league level girls and boys basketball coaches have had a stipend in the appendix c for a very long time but we've had cheer coaches
028and athletic directors at those elementaries um you know for for a couple of decades now that basically just volunteer their time and so we're proposing that we'll add a stipend for both of those positions at the same level as the elementary basketball coaches are and so just to summarize quickly this slide puts it all in one place for you it's a two-year agreement six percent and 6.1 percent on average both appendix b and c would increase by six percent each of those two years uh five percent decrease in dental premiums um referendum increases remain unchanged uh and then the parental adoption leave changes and uh changes to the ancillary duty rate to 30 dollars per hour and then several adjustments we just mentioned to appendix b and c and so we would be happy to
029take any questions you might have at this time dr all right thank you so colleagues i can visually see todd and julie and i oh i can see rich and nikki so do you all have any particular questions regarding the proposed agreement maybe my question is just for amy as you reviewed this with the 100 members that participated what was some of the feedback that you received in those sessions or maybe questions that they had um the biggest question i've had from my members and and we have um right around 465 members right now so on the survey that they've sent in those evenings they showed up or that evening and they want to know why we have not we don't have a column for a master's degree and on our survey that was a
030big thing that they had said to us we would really like to see a column for a master's degree so um on our first slide you'll notice that we had some folks from ista who are also on our team and we spent hours and scott rayburn this year he would agree we spent hours trying to figure out how can we do a master's column and get folks the most bang for their buck and every single time everybody made less so we were not able to get that in this time so that that is the the biggest question that they've had um but then the other thing i think is that they have come to me and said is this right are you sure this number is right on here when they looked at their increases
031so um that that's been a nice a nice thing to hear too so good and how so you know i'm learning the scales and the steps and touch so how does it work if a teacher gets a master's degree they get do they get an increase right away and that moves them up the scale or or not no in the years ago probably close to a decade ago we're getting close to a decade it's been since every school basically had a very similar almost identical salary schedule that looked at a bachelor's column and a master's column and then sometimes they had additional columns for credit hours the legislature basically mandated that that went away almost a decade ago and then we've slowly gotten back to a salary schedule and that's what you've seen on the
032screen is a schedule that teachers can look at when we transitioned back to schedule the first time we took every teacher and this was five years ago probably four or five years ago we took every teacher who had a masters and gave them an additional bump back then so even today even though there's not a master's column those teachers that have been with us for those at least four or five years since we made that change have permanently gotten an increase each year as they you know they were on a separate line basically than what they would have been but it doesn't show up in the scale as an additional column and i'll just mention nikki and others that might not know we started last year amy mentioned the survey that she's doing with her
033members at the end of bargaining last year we each both bcsc's bargaining team and cea's bargaining team we did a debrief independently and then together where we said what went well in the bargaining and what do we wish for still what do we think we can improve upon and what do we want to accomplish next time we come to the table and we'll do that again this time i think it really helped us understand where each team was coming from and what our goals and targets were so that we could start planning in the this time it's two years between between bargaining but that's really helpful and i think it's helped with our collaboration go ahead mr stenner okay thanks there's the button um can you talk a little bit chad about how the uh
034the second bullet the six percent and the six point one percent average increases are calculated and and what exactly that means sure so we took um every teacher is really easy in year one because we took their current salary added twenty nine hundred and thirty five dollars to it um and got a new number and and then took an average of all of those um percentage increases and that gave us the six percent and so while some teachers who maybe are at the bottom of the scale and they're a new relatively new teacher their percent increase could be you know in eight and a half or nine percent and the teachers that are already up in the 80 85 000 range you know it could be in the three percent um you know or somewhere
035around three percent they average together um across all the teachers to be six percent and then year two is similar but this the increases aren't the same for every teacher they range from 2600 to 3800 depending on where they are on the scale and again each individual teacher's percent increase and then an average of all of those to get 6.1 percent would it uh i don't know the the steps in the process would it be um okay not a question statement i i would be interested in seeing um what's the measure where it's half above and half below the median the median thank you i'd be interested in seeing what the median increase was maybe in dollars as well as percentage terms i can and then also i know you forgot right now the percentage
036i would have to look up um obviously in year one the median is 2935 since everyone's getting everybody's yeah right in year two it is 3200 is the median increase in dollars okay but i'd have to look up the percentage median for you that's okay that's that's good information to have just the flat dollar numbers and then also in terms of what it costs the corporation would you say that we'll be spending an extra six percent in year one and six point one percent year two that's correct that's exactly right thank you but conceivably isn't it more than that because of other things but salary wise yes but we're paying for a lot more other things than just salary correct so teacher salary expenditures will increase by about six percent in each of the two
037years in addition to that we generally use the conservative 20 percent you can add 20 percent to that to pay for fica payroll taxes and then turf which is five and a half or eight and a half percent almost all eight and a half percent at this point uh and then also the 401a matching dollars on the 403b investment all adds up to about 19.15 but we round up to 20 when we're doing doing estimations about what that would cost us in addition of course the budget you have seen twice now that will be on the agenda for monday includes the nine percent increase for support staff as well uh thank you for mentioning the support staff and this always confuses me a little bit i believe that all the administrators principals and the folks
038that work in the corporate office they all have teaching licenses are they covered by this agreement good question they are not covered by this agreement they're not part of the collective bargaining unit but we will bring on monday night proposed increases for support for administrators as well okay so we kind of have three groups of employees we have teachers administrators and support staff is that the right lingo that's exactly right that's how we think of them as three different groups and on this final overview we don't have a bullet i remember amy mentioned that the health trust balance is getting better some years it seems like the the whole raise we were able to give teachers got eaten up by additional health benefits costs some teachers not all how how will our health benefits be
039changing in january that's another great question mr stenner tomorrow the health trust meets actually tomorrow afternoon dr bills represents the board on that health trust and they'll be looking at recommendations from our consultant as well as projections but thankfully we anticipate a modest increase the budget that you have you might remember the first presentation i gave to you i used five percent as the assumption in there and i would guess that we will be somewhere close to that five percent um increase in health premiums for 2022 but that will come to you for approval on monday as well dental and health premiums this collective bargaining agreement and then administrator increases will be on the monday's agenda do you you might hesitate to predict before the health trust needs but would you anticipate that we will
040have teachers whose entire raise will be not by increase yes chad is shaking his head now the only thing i wanted to add to this mr center was that when we bargain and we talk about health insurance the piece that we can bargain is the amount that we each party pays towards the premium so the percentage that the employee pays versus what the employer pays that's the only part we can bargain and for that portion of health insurance that's done there's not anything else about that so the percentage that the employee pays is remaining the same so then tomorrow the health trust meets and the five of us that are on the health trust we will then vote on what is proposed to us for what health insurance where that needs to go is that
041fair thank you for help and so mr center just to give you a rough example our most expensive plan is close to a total cost of forty thousand dollars for a family plan on the ppo but the employee pays about twenty percent of that cost and the district pays about eighty percent of that cost so a five percent increase to the employee on that would be about three hundred and eighty dollars and we have very very few employees still on that that ppo low deductible plan that's so that's worst case scenario with a five percent increase would be a 300 approximately 350 380 increase great questions thank you both are there questions here when i say here i mean in the room no anything else well thank you this is extremely thorough and i appreciate
042it very very very much and just for me so there's only that one little piece that doesn't start till january 1 of 2022 right everything else goes back to july 1. super cool how exciting i can't thank you all enough for all of the work and the the team i'm not talking about myself but the two teams thank you so very very much it's wonderful to work someplace where we're all collaborative all right thank you doctor said i would just add a real quick comment um first of all echoing everything amy and chad said and thanking both teams for their hard work and getting to this point and just reminding the board that this is a required step by statute now to have the public meeting that we just had to share this information for
043you now to ponder and consider and maybe get comments about it whatever the case might be as the community is aware of of this proposal now and by law we had you have 72 hours you have at least 72 hours between this meeting and then voting on it we have much more time than that given that we are having our regular school board meeting next monday night and this will be a recommendation we'll have a slide or two a much much shorter presentation for you at next monday night school board meeting just to put the information back in front of you for proof but actual approval will come now uh monday night if you have questions you know following uh this is besides what you've asked here and you want to reach out certainly amy
044chad myself gina and dr please uh could knock her shed she said in as well could address those questions but hopefully you have the right information that you need and you can ponder and approve uh given that the caa membership which does vote again i believe it's thursday and friday amy of this week to hopefully approve from that side of things and he'll have the opportunity next monday night awesome thank you very much for that clarity it is nice to have all this detail ahead of time because every once while our meetings are like drinking water from a fire hose so we won't have one of those are there other comments that my colleagues would like to make this is that official board input review stage of our agenda so i'm more than kathy dey
045hof dwyer did you have a comment you wanted to make i just wanted to say i agree that it's nice to see that we're finally getting the salaries of our teachers and support staff back you know moving up the scale a little bit between cost of living and especially we all love living in columbus and it's not the cheapest place to live you know and we want to enjoy life it's nice to have a job you love and that you're passionate about that you can truly afford to work at i know you're not let me rephrase that i know i'm not to the point being on the board where i'm you know super happy with all the salaries with our support staff and you know our teachers and you know everybody involved but at least
046we're making steps to get there and hopefully we'll get there sooner than later great thank you very much there are other comments any from any of my colleagues i've got one dr shed sure go ahead yeah i would just uh like to congratulate and applaud both sides for you know what seems to be working very well uh together for in coming together for a much improved contract uh for teachers um having kind of been in the business myself for 30 years and done a lot of this work i've seen and studied a lot of contracts across the state and you know i can say this is there's ranks right up there and hopefully this is a step in the right direction and positive relationship that will will continue well into the future great thank you
047your perspective helps us all all right again i can't thank you enough it was wonderful working with you i can say that as a representative i appreciate all the hard work and the research that went into everything and i'm so glad we could tackle things that we haven't tackled for a couple of decades like hey that's most impressive so thank you very much and i appreciate the thorough information that you're giving to all the members so that they can have a true understanding of what they're voting on and what they can look forward to when they're a part of bcsc so thank you thank you all for coming together for a special board meeting i should note that we as has been referenced a couple of times we will be having a regular school board
048meeting on monday october 25th 6 30 will be here and then there is also a strategic planning session planned for friday the 29th will start at 9 00 a.m and will be here in the administrative building in our boardroom any last comments all right everybody stay healthy it's gorgeous outside enjoy with all of this i'll call this meeting adjourned thank you