Lauri Johnson, who is a co-chair of Centralia Education Association, updates union members during a bargaining session with the Centralia School District.
Kerri Kite-Pocklington, who is a co-chair of Centralia Education Association, stands with other teachers along Harrison Avenue in August while the union and the Centralia School District bargain.
After the tenth bargaining session between Centralia teachers and the Centralia School District, teacher contracts are still under negotiation.
“There was zero movement on part of the district,” said Kerri Kite-Pocklington of the most recent bargaining session on Friday.
Kite-Pocklington is a co-chair of the union and K-3 physical education teacher at Edison Elementary School.
Centralia teachers voted on Aug. 1 to call for a strike unless the Centralia Education Association (their union) and the Centralia School District come to an agreement by September.
Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos said that he is optimistic the union and the district will come to an agreement before September. He said that the district has not begun planning for a teacher strike.
“I can’t say right now (how the district would respond),” said Davalos of a potential strike. “Of course we would do our due diligence in planning, if we felt the need. In the next week or so we will feel the pulse of how things are going. I think this is something districts face from time to time.”
The next bargaining session is scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 26 and school is scheduled to begin on Sept. 5.
Elsewhere in Lewis County, other school districts are wrapping up negotiations.
According to the Washington Education Association’s website, six school districts in Lewis County have already settled contract negotiations — Mossyrock, Toledo, Winlock, Morton, White Pass and Castle Rock. The salary information in this article is based on WEA’s site.
Mossyrock teachers received the largest raise in the county, according to WEA.
Mossyrock Education Association received an average 25.9 percent salary increase. The minimum a teacher can make in the district is $44,672, while the maximum is $84,200.
Mossyrock Superintendent Lisa Grant noted that the 25.9 percent salary increase in Mossyrock isn’t a fair comparison to Centralia salaries. She also said that she believes that figure is too high. Centralia School District provided 25 days of ‘“TRI” pay, while Mossyrock previously provided 12.
TRI stands for additional time, responsibility and incentive. TRI days were funded by local levy dollars and previously were a way to boost teacher salaries.
These changes to teacher salaries are due to 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.
This past year, however, the Washington legislature came into full compliance by passing a bill to overhaul school funding and provide more state money for teacher salaries.
“People make the assumption that everyone started with a level playing field,” Grant said. “Districts are sitting in different places.”
Grant said that Mossyrock had to offer a larger raise to be competitive with districts, such as Centralia or Chehalis.
“We certainly believe that our teachers and staff are our strongest assets and strongest resource,” Grant said. “We made some shifts in our budget to put as much resources as we could towards our staff.”
Mossyrock settled contract negotiations in June, but the only part of the contract that was open was for salary. Grant said that she meets monthly with MEA. The district offered information sessions on the new funding system and how it collects money from local levies beginning in January.
“We just thought it would put us all on the same page and we tried to be really transparent, as did our teachers,” Grant said. “It’s public money, so we are trying to work to be as transparent as possible.”
Toledo Education Association received the second-largest raise in the county, with a 20 percent salary increase, according to the WEA’s website. The minimum a teacher can make in the district is $43,956, while the maximum is $87,543.
“Depending on how you look at it, in Toledo you could say that we had a 24.4 percent increase, but you could also say that we only had a 13.2 percent increase depending on where you look,” said Toledo School District Superintendent Chris Rust. “Depending on how you’re computing your percentages, you can make them (look) however you want to.”
Rust explained that while teachers’ base salary increased, they no longer have TRI days in Toledo School District. Teachers in Toledo School District previously had nine TRI days.
In the Toledo School District, for example, a brand new teacher received a 17.7 percent raise for salary, alone. With TRI days factored in, however, it is a 13.2 percent raise. It’s these differences that have complicated salary negotiations this summer for districts across Washington state.
However, Rust said that percentages didn’t come up during negotiations.
“A lot of the work that we had to do was coming to agreement on the facts of what the state was going to be giving us, what the law was requiring (and) where the limits were,” Rust said. “Depending on who you talked to, there was a different interpretation on what the statutes were saying and what the regulations would be.”
Rust said that during bargaining sessions, everyone was huddled around a computer to enter different numbers and come up the most money the district could provide to teachers and remain fiscally responsible.
“The system we discarded last year has been in place 40 years, so this is a sea change that we are going through in education right now,” Rust said.
