Teachers ‘hopeful’ with talks scheduled
A last-minute negotiation session has been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon between Ringgold School District and its teachers, who notified the district last week they plan to strike Wednesday.
Ringgold Education Association said in Friday’s notification to the district they were willing to meet to negotiate “day or night” to reach an agreement before Wednesday, according to Maria Degnan, president of the teachers union.
“The fact that they did take us up on our offer to negotiate makes me hopeful,” Degnan said Monday.
The 200 members of the teachers union have been working without a contract since July 1. Their decision to strike came last week after they unanimously rejected for the second time a fact-finder’s recommendation for a new contract.
“We don’t want to go on strike, but we felt that it is our only option,” Degnan said. “The bargaining team thought we needed to use everything in our toolbox. When that’s your only option, that’s the one we’ll have to take.”
The fact finder’s recommendation, which was released Monday, proposed raising the salary range from between $36,000 and $78,508 a year last term to between $41,439 and $83,947 a year by the end of a five-year contract, depending on education levels and years of employment. However, the union noted that the proposed contract would freeze all of the teachers at their current salary steps, preventing them from advancing. That means, said the union, that at the end of the contract, a first-year, newly hired teacher would be paid the same as a teacher who had been with the district for five years.
When asked why the union rejected the recommendation, Degnan said it was because of the low salary proposed.
“We are some of the lowest-paid teachers in the area,” she said. “The fact finder took the salary positions of the district. We’d have to devalue every step if we took their salary proposal.”
The union had proposed a contract with a 4.5-percent raise in the first year, followed by 3 percent raises in each of the next four years, while maintaining current increments for salary steps.
“We want the district to respect our profession,” Degnan said.
There had been a negotiation session scheduled for Oct. 23, but after the teachers notified the district of their intention to strike, the district attempted to schedule something sooner. The district notified the teachers Monday morning that they were able to meet Tuesday for negotiations.
“We reached out to the state immediately to try to schedule some negotiations sessions with a state mediator,” said school board President William Stein. “Everybody wants to get this done and wants there not to be a strike. We’re just trying to move this along.”
Stein said that while he’s “always been hopeful” of reaching a contract with the teachers, he’s not sure if that can be accomplished in Tuesday’s meeting alone.
“We’re still pretty far apart on money and health insurance issues,” he said Monday. “We’re not only accountable to the teachers – and we do hold them in high regard – but we’re also accountable to the taxpayers. I certainly don’t want to put any expectations in people’s minds that this will be done tomorrow.”
If an agreement isn’t reached Tuesday, the teachers will strike Wednesday morning, Degnan said. She said Superintendent Karen Polkabla already has notified parents of the possibility that there might not be school Wednesday. “We have, in my opinion, some of the best teachers, who are working two and three jobs to make ends meet,” Degnan said. “We feel that our teachers deserve more respect than they’ve received from the district, but we are willing to work with the district to overcome that.”