001of course really advertised based on all the guidelines we have around gratification hearing I now open this free gratification meeting I would like to call and tell them to provide information about the terms of the tentative agreement of the collective bargaining agreement that's correct Mr Alexander we did post the tentative agreement Monday evening before after the association that ratified on their side this is a requirement of Senate act 390. it's been around for about three or about five years I guess now actually that we posted 72 hours in advance and we'll discuss it um So today we're just going to share the details of the summary agreement the board is I think planned to meet and take action on this on Tuesday morning and so that'll be the actual official action there'll be no vote
002taken this evening I'm going to run through the bullet points that Miss uh Howard has up on the screen for us the standard of agreement equates to a little over eight percent for the uh of an increase for the entire collective bargaining agreement individual teachers though will see a total base salary increase that averages out to 5.65 and there's a couple ways that we get to that number the first one is just a base increase to the salary schedule so we take everyone's current rate and we add 4.18 to it and that's the increase the second step of that increase is a row advancement for teachers who are returning from last year and met the evaluation criteria and for them individually it's a 2.15 percent increase to their compensation from the prior year however overall
003when we factor in all teachers it's about 1.47 so we take those two numbers the 4.18 and the 1.4 seven and that's what gets us to that average of 5.65 I've noted there the two differences in compensation again a returning and qualifying teacher based off Effectiveness would get a 6.33 base salary increase from last year and a new teacher to Center Grove or someone who didn't meet the evaluation requirement would would receive the the 4.18 that's not entirely true a new teacher would receive the 4.18 if you don't make the evaluation criteria you don't get those raises this is one of those years where I think everyone's going to get it so that's why I'm using some of that language a column advancement we do this for teachers who receive more degrees credits they move
004on to a Masters or Masters and Beyond they get a lane change it's a slightly higher percentage it moves them over in the in the salary scale and we granted those this year and then the final compensation increase for for all up top is a one-time retention bonus will be paid out on December 30th to all currently employed teachers at that time that's in the amount of 500 and you'll see the boards using cash balance and roughly the amount of 3.12 or 312 thousand dollars for that equates to a 0.88 increase for the entire bargaining unit um that that number that I'm presenting there also includes some social security contributions that we make public teacher employee teacher retirement funds and others so what's that get our scale then um our new opening salary our starting
005base salary will be 46 000 on 15 and our top base salary will be 88 863 dollars and then I wanted to point out just a couple things as we've talked about individual salary increases a lot through this process the lowest base salary increase this would be a newly hired teacher without a b or with a ba that does not receive that road advancement would receive another eight it would receive a base increase of eighteen hundred dollars from last year to this year that's not inclusive of that 500 retention bonus just wanted to point that out um and the highest would be a teacher actually on the second highest row that's row 27 they would move to row 28 they would have a masters plus 32 in their degree and they would receive a base
006salary increase of 5300 from last year so then we get in some of the other items that are outside of Base compensation and these items provide an additional 1.54 to the entire borrowing unit and you'll see there in the amount of about 546 thousand dollars we will increase the ECA schedule by 4.18 percent so the entire scale will move up there and then we're going to add some new ECA positions or some coordinator positions in the handbook some assistant golf coaches some event managers to help with the events and then the biomed coordinator we've done this in our science department for chemistry and physics and some other specialty sciences and that's what that relates to um we then have changes to the healthcare plan we've had a positive year in health plan in the health
007care plan fortunately we don't have to repeat a large increase like last year but the committee did meet back in August discussed and agreed at the time to to present a a recommendation of a two percent increase for employees but to offset that with the holiday and so what you'll see that two percent increase for the highest plan on a family member would be a seven dollar per pay increase all others would be at six dollars or less per pay the district's going to actually increase their share by over five percent to try to keep that impact on the employee as low as possible and then as I mentioned a one-time holiday that actually equates to a four percent reduction we have roughly 24 we have 24 pays in a year so that's where that
008we get that number so the net increase will be down for 2023 for our health plan members but we will continue to get monthly Revenue coming in to the Health Plan fund to keep that moving forward and keep us back trying to get to where we want to be with our Reserve level and no change the age HSA at this time the agreement also includes a match increase to 850 for the 403 b we did have an herb compliance finding last spring that we removed that language it was something we'd add in the prior year and that's no longer needed so we struck that we'll strike that from the agreement we have moved sick leave usage language out of the contract and into the handbook just to give us more flexibility and a sick leave
009is fluctuating on us as we all know after the pandemic we can make changes to that as we need to just with some discussion and then finally we're going to renumber the salary scale I've talked to the the association leadership on this we're going to renumber get rid of those two rows that were zero across the board and we're going to add a note so folks when they look in Skyward so teachers when they look in Skyward will know I might have been on row row five in the old salary scale but now I'm two rows lower why is that we're going to put a little note on there to say prior to this this was row five so they can kind of track that through Skyward and have some some knowledge of themselves that
010we didn't just move them down two rows but it by label it might look like that so but the amounts would stay the same I believe that's the end of the the summary document Mr Alexander all I need to share for today thank you Mr chairman the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the attendant of the agreement are there members of the public president who would like to comment cut the microphone did this can be really awkward if I have to lay on this table got it got it okay we appreciate the opportunity to say if you were this morning um we were asked by our membership uh to report on our ratification meeting and share some observations that we hope will take us into better bargaining next year despite our
011membership ratifying the board's offer we likely don't need to say that teachers were disappointed in what they ratified the vote was close and we have never seen teachers more dismayed dejected and resentful many ballots offered commentary that we cannot share at a microphone but none of it was snarky or funny all of it was angry our members believe the board adherence to the idea of parity and compensation is something that serves administrators more than it does teachers a detail obvious to anyone who has seen and shared the public information we have highlighted these last months the disparity it creates is also something that has been acknowledged by District leaders and board members in past discussions of compensation the board is a governing body and the board can choose to change it yet it was the
012adherence to the practice that led to our members rejecting the offer and then to mediation and our members believe that adherence to parity is selective for example there is no parity whatsoever in the way retirement benefits are allocated and since 2014 with the inclusion of contributions to the 401a the disparities grown exponentially there's also no parity in the way that teachers compete with frivolous spending that adds up to what is likely hundreds of thousands of dollars every year cell phones Landscaping redecorating updating buildings and Technologies teachers are forced to use and the continual Reliance of siphoning off over 9 million a year from the education fund we bargain to retain teachers since we requested the bread documents in September we've lost seven our own Anonymous surveying of teachers revealed that 125 Center Grove teachers say
013they are actively exploring other employment the same survey revealed that 13 Center Grove teachers are currently interviewing for jobs outside the district and 16 have already decided not to return next year our plan is to survey them again in the spring the board has shared public statements in which they assert their value for Center Grove Educators the events of this year's bargaining are not convincing perhaps disappointing the people you say you value is a necessary result of difficult decision making whatever your reasons if you do value teachers and if you want to retain them you need to find a way to regain their trust and show them you do value them because simply put very few of them believe you thanks for the time seeing none may not close this meeting or I now close
014this public hearing one of the members of the board who have any comments or questions okay there is no board action required at this time we'll take action on Tuesday Morning um is the second piece of the meeting in the process that's governed by IC Code