Centralia School District and Teachers’ Union Wrap Up 8th Round of Negotiations

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While representatives from the Centralia Education Association and Centralia School District negotiated teacher contracts Wednesday morning and afternoon, educators, their families and community members grilled hamburgers and hotdogs across the street.

“It’s not going as quickly as we had hoped,” said Kerri Kite-Pocklington, who is a co-chair of the union and K-3 physical education teacher at Edison Elementary School. “We started in May. We started early and as you can see we are still at the table. We have districts in our state that have already settled their contracts and their new salary scales. We have other districts in Lewis County that have settled and we have not come to an agreement yet.”

Wednesday marked the eighth round of contract negotiations, but the parties have not reached an agreement. Kite-Pocklington said the union hoped negotiations would end in June.

These negotiations are complicated by the McCleary case, in which the Supreme Court ruled the legislature was not fully funding K-12 education. The court ruled the state was causing districts to use local levy money to supplement teacher salaries and basic education, giving districts in more affluent areas an unfair advantage. While the ruling was handed down in 2012, the Washington legislature only came into full compliance in the past year, passing a bill that overhauled school funding and provided more state money for teacher salaries.

“Traditionally, the state salary model has been mandated by the legislature,” Kite-Pocklington said. “So (now) they said individual districts can negotiate what their salaries will look like. So you have some people that have asked for a 12 percent raise, you have some people that have asked for 18 percent. There is a district that asked for 25 percent and they got a 23 percent raise, which is fabulous.”

According to the Washington state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, in the 2017-18 school year, the average base salary per full-time employee in the district was $55,156, while the average total salary per full-time employee was $65,992. The average additional salary per individual was $10,394.

In addition to the base salary, teachers received compensation for TRI pay, or extra pay for time, responsibility and incentive.

Teachers in the Centralia School District received 25 TRI-paid days in the 2017-18 school year, according to the collective bargaining agreement between the District and the Centralia Education Association for September 2016 until August 2018. Nine of those days were for time. Sixteen were for things such as grading and time working on student data and assessment, according to the agreement. 

TRI pay was originally meant for teacher extras, but over the years it became a way for districts in the state to boost teacher salaries, Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos told The Chronicle.

The union argues that it wants an increase in teachers’ base pay, which are not funded by levy dollars. It also argues the raises it is fighting for are unrelated to TRI pay.

No one that The Chronicle spoke to provided the same answer as to how raises should be allocated after McCleary.

“It’s a political answer (however) you look at it,” Kite-Pocklington said.



Lauri Johnson, who is the other co-chair, is one of five representatives negotiating for raises on behalf of teachers.

“I know in the past we have had some school board members say salaries should not be paid for with levy dollars,” Johnson said. “The McCleary decision helped ... fix that. 

Davalos said he does not believe districts have received clear guidelines from the state on how to proceed post-McCleary.

“It is restricted now by law how you can use levy money,” Davalos said. “It was really supposed to be for other programs ... that’s the trouble we all got in.”

As part of the McCleary fix, the legislature increased state dollars to schools. 

"Then they took away levy money, which lowered our overall budget," Davalos said. 

This juggling of funding sources caused a net $1.3 million decrease in funding for the school district's budget.

While the union and the district did not come to an agreement on Wednesday, there is another session scheduled for July 28.

Johnson said she believes school will begin the day after Labor Day, but the union and the school district still have not approved a calendar.

“We have tried to give our teachers more because they deserve more, but we have been taking (the money) from other places to do that,” Davalos said. “This increase is definitely an improvement … it’s still not enough.”