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Norman Draper, Star Tribune

With a Jan. 15 deadline looming, school boards and teachers are being prodded to reach contract settlements more quickly this year.

But hundreds of millions of dollars in new money from the state doesn't necessarily mean that teachers are reaping big contract windfalls.

So far, according to figures provided by the Minnesota School Boards Association and the Education Minnesota teachers union, more than 100 of the state's 343 school districts have reached agreement with their teachers on new two-year contracts, covering this year and the 2006-07 school year. And reports of new settlements are coming in all the time.

Education officials representing both the teachers and school boards expect a flurry of ratification votes over the next two weeks, sealing deals on most of the remaining settlements.

"What we typically see is quite a bulge in settlements over the holidays," said Judy Schaubach, president of Education Minnesota.

Among the Twin Cities area districts that have reached agreements with teachers are Anoka-Hennepin, St. Paul, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, Robbinsdale, Wayzata, Minnetonka, Hopkins and Chaska. Talks are continuing in Minneapolis.

The negotiations deadline is in effect for the first time since 2001. Without the deadline, the last set of negotiations dragged on for two years in many cases. As of last week, Schaubach said, 102 settlements had been reported to the union.

"When we've had the January 15 deadline [actually Jan. 17 this year, since Jan. 15 falls on a Sunday and Jan. 16 is Martin Luther King Day], we've never had fewer than 95 percent of the districts settled [by the deadline]," Schaubach said. "And when we hadn't, we never had more than 38 percent. It's hard to argue that the deadline doesn't have an impact."

Districts that haven't wrapped up their negotiations by the deadline will face a loss of state aid of $25 per student. Still, some districts that figure they have more to gain by stretching contract talks out past the deadline might be willing to risk the fine.

"While some people would find losing any revenues to be objectionable, the boards and superintendents know that sometimes the loss of a few dollars now is worth the long-range savings," said Bob Lowe of the School Boards Association. "That all depends, of course, on the final settlement results."

Higher cost increases

Overall, settlements are running at 4.2 percent in increased costs this year and 4.1 percent next year, according to association figures. Those figures are slightly higher than settlement figures for the previous two years, but slightly lower than the increases in 2001-02 and 2002-03.

The figures include not only the salary increases negotiated for teachers, but also the costs of benefits plus automatic raises that many teachers receive for additional years of experience and earning more college credits.

Salary increase figures, Schaubach said, are running "a bit on the low side."

Still, some districts have clearly plowed some of the new money from the Legislature into a better financial package for teachers than they might otherwise have negotiated. Robbinsdale schools, for instance, bumped up their teacher pay 2.3 percent this year and 2.9 percent next year, resulting in total cost increases of almost 6 percent the first year and more than 4 percent the second, said Superintendent Stan Mack. That follows two years of much smaller increases.

New money from the Legislature made such a settlement "more possible," Mack said. Not only that, said Robbinsdale Federation of Teachers president Tom Dooher, but the district is taking on a bigger share of teachers' health care costs.

The new state money also helped Anoka-Hennepin bump teachers' pay higher, said general counsel Paul Cady.

Still, negotiators said, higher health care costs continue to be one of the biggest issues raised at the bargaining table.

There could still be more money on the table. Some districts will go right from contract negotiations to bargaining with teachers to participate in a state program called Q Comp that offers additional state funding to districts that change the way they pay teachers.

Despite the long teachers strike in the outstate Crosby-Ironton district, which ended in April, school and union officials say such an occurrence doesn't portend more strikes to come.

"I don't see any strikes looming," Schaubach said. "There's no place that's really heating up for a strike."

Norman Draper • 612-673-4547

http://www.startribune.com/1592/story/149637.html