The Juneau School District and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Juneau Education Association is the district\u2019s largest employee association, representing about 355 teachers and certified staff.<\/p>\n
Last time the two groups reached an agreement, it was just for one year. This contract, if ratified, would be for three years, said spokesperson for the six-member JEA negotiation team Patrick Roach.<\/p>\n
\u201cAround the district we\u2019re losing teachers, which is very difficult to see. PTR \u2014 pupil-teacher ratio \u2014 is going up, so that was always in everyone\u2019s mind. The Legislature has been unpredictable with education finding in the past few years, so I think the stability of a three-year contract will be nice. It allows both the union and the district to reorganize itself, look to the future and figure out where to go next,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The current contract ends this school year. The new one, if ratified, would begin with the next school year in August.<\/p>\n
Details of the contract can\u2019t be released until its members have seen the tentative contract. Roach said it will hopefully be released to its membership on Friday. JEA members are required to have the contract for seven days before voting to approve it.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo get quorum, we need a simple majority of membership. To pass it, we need a simple majority of whoever shows up, which could be challenging because it\u2019s the end of the year. We\u2019re hoping to get everyone together and put this to bed before the summer,\u201d Roach said.<\/p>\n
He called the negotiation process \u201ccooperative.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like we were working toward a common goal, that it was kind of one of those \u2018all hands on deck\u2019 moments where we all realized that not just our district but every district is struggling right now in this economic atmosphere. And instead of it being adversarial where each side is trying to get what it can get, it was like we were coming together \u2014 what\u2019s best for kids, what\u2019s best for the school district and what\u2019s right for teachers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ted VanBronkhorst, the district\u2019s director of human resources, agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two teams worked well together and were able to come to a fair agreement that stays within our fiscal constraints and recognizes the excellent work of our teachers in the district,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Juneau School District and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract Saturday. The Juneau Education Association is the district\u2019s largest employee association, representing about 355 teachers and certified staff. Last time the two groups reached an agreement, it was just for one year. This contract, if ratified, would be for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}