43
South Range approves new teachers' contract
By ROBERT CONNELLY
NORTH LIMA
South Range schoolteachers are getting their first pay raises in a few years.
The South Range Board of Education unanimously approved a new three-year contract with the South Range Education Association on Monday night. The teachers’ salaries had been frozen since the 2010-11 school year.
The contract is retroactive to Sept. 1 and expires Aug. 31, 2018.
Superintendent Dennis Dunham said contract negotiations began in February, and an improved financial state of the district led to the new contract.
Based on the 2010-11 pay scale, a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience starts at $32,997 and with five years’ experience makes $38,936. The new contract has a 1.5 percent increase on the base salary the first two years with a 1 percent increase in the third year. The 10 percent insurance contribution by teachers will be unchanged in years one and two and then increase by 2 percent in the third year.
The same agreement was made with the South Range Classified Education Association, as well as the nonrepresented employees such as administrators, excluding Dunham.
“It’s a modest increase in base pay, and I can tell you it’s in line with every other education association or classified association across the state,” Dunham said.
He further said that contract allows “us to move the district forward without negotiating or having concerns about contracts year in and year out.”
“I think it’s a tremendous vote of confidence from the board, and it’s something that will certainly boost the morale of the teachers, who will continue to go into their classrooms and act professionally as they have through this difficult time of pay freezes,” said Sam Landry, SREA treasurer.
The reason the district was able to approve the salary increases is because of an improved financial outlook. A new five-year forecast also was approved Monday night.
District Treasurer Jim Phillips made several specific points that have changed the financial outlook. The first is that the threat of a large cut in state funding, more than $456,000, did not happen.
Phillips also said an increase in the amount of students through open enrollment is generating increased operating revenue. The first year of open enrollment had 90 kids enter the district, and this year, the third year, has 266 students attending the schools through open enrollment. State funding follows students coming into the district.
Those improvements are on top of an influx of $307,348 in real-estate property taxes collected earlier this year, with some of that being delinquent property taxes received.
Using “reasonable assumptions,” Phillips laid out the next five years of balanced budgets. A surplus of $1.9 million at the end of this school year would be followed by a surplus of $1.9 million the next year, then $1.5 million, then a balance of $771,000 to end the 2018-19 school year.
A deficit of $477,000 is projected in the 2019-20 school year, which Phillips said is “not going to happen.”
Phillips listed assumptions he made in his forecast including an increase of 2 percent annually on property taxes, an increase of 3 percent annually for personnel services “to account for the new contracts,” and an increase of 9 percent for benefits as health care costs increase.
The main driver of the rise in health care is prescription costs, which went up 11.5 percent this year. Those increases are balanced out by open enrollment increasing. Phillips “conservatively” used an estimate of 15 more students each year through open enrollment.