FILE PHOTO — The Centralia School Board meets remotely on Thursday, April 23.
The Centralia School Board approved the 2020-21 Centralia Education Association (CEA) Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) at their meeting on Wednesday afternoon.
The current CBA expires on Aug. 31, 2020. Some of the changes within the contract include three furlough days per teacher during the school year and an adjusted base salary based on a state-funded inflationary of 1.6 percent.
“One of the first things we looked at was salary. We know we are in a financial situation that makes it difficult to provide any additional compensation to our teaching staff. So the teachers actually agreed with taking three furlough days,” said the district’s director of human resources Tabitha Whiting.
Two labor-management committees will be formed to address the high workload of “English language learners” teachers and the other will address student discipline and equity.
The CBA also eliminated “pooling dollars” for health benefits. Whiting said that there was a “pretty substantial” pot of money that was distributed evenly among teachers who had enrolled in a medical plan.
The money that was saved from that elimination of those dollars was not repurposed.
“When you look at the fiscal impact of the contract — with the furlough days, elimination of pooling dollars and the 1.6 percent from the state — we are looking at no fiscal impact or very minimal fiscal impact that we anticipate from the bargaining changes which we knew was important given our financial situation and the teacher’s union recognized that as well,” said Whiting.
The full one-year CBA summary can be viewed here: app.eduportal.com/documents/view/761533.
