With two weeks left in the school year, South Washington County teachers still are working under a contract that expired last summer.
The district is one of 18 in the state that has yet to reach agreement on a new deal for teachers, according to Education Minnesota. Burnsville-Eagan-Savage is another.
South Washington County reached a tentative agreement with teachers April 4, but 72 percent of voting members rejected it, union president Marty Fridgen said.
Fridgen said teachers were upset that while the agreement included a 2.87 percent salary schedule increase next school year, it offered no raises this school year.
“That was concerning to people. Also, some of our workload issues,” she said, citing increased demands on teachers.
The school board says it can’t afford pay increases this school year because new revenue from last year’s property tax referendum hasn’t yet kicked in.
“In the meantime, we will still have work to do to get back to a place of financial health and currently have a significantly low fund balance that consists of only a week and a half worth of operating funds, in the event of an emergency,” the board said in a recent letter to the community.
The rejected agreement would have cost $7.5 million over two years, which is the most the school board said it could afford without cutting positions and increasing class sizes.
Negotiators met in mediation Tuesday for the sixth time since February, in search of a better deal.
Teachers have been wearing red on Mondays, walking into school as groups and limiting their job-related activities to their contractual eight-hour days.
“When we’re not under work-to-rule, there’s tons of stuff going home on weekends and nights,” Fridgen said.
Fridgen said the drawn-out negotiation has made it difficult for teachers, as well as the school district, to make financial plans.
Still, she said, there has been little acrimony and no talk of a strike vote.
In 2016, the district’s teachers also rejected the first tentative agreement before approving the next.
South Washington County teachers were paid, on average, $65,316 last school year, according to Minnesota Department of Education data. That’s 20th in the state among traditional school districts.