Every year the Park City School District works with teachers to renegotiate their annual contracts, but that will not be the case next year. The district is working with teachers to create a three-year-long contract for teachers on staff, but with the budget restraints carrying over from last year, the process has been a long one with weeks of negotiations still on the docket.
From budget constraints to insurance coverage, creating a contract that covers the next three years has been a talking point since the beginning of the summer.
“The multiyear contract is a new concept,” said Ed Mulick, the co-president of the Park City Teacher’s Union and a teacher representative in the negotiations. “We’re not just negotiating for this year. We’re negotiating the next three years.”
And shifting from an annual system to once every three years has the district and teachers breathing a sigh of relief, he added, although it has taken a lot more work to reach agreements with the school district.
“Every year (these negotiations) create this terrible environment,” Mulick said. “It’s just like, ‘What are we going to get?’ We fight and fight and it creates this strife between the school board, the teachers, the superintendent. It’s like we’re constantly battling. This is a healing opportunity instead of always picking at the scab.”
The administration and teachers have agreed to freeze salaries for the first year and are closer to a compromise on insurance policies. The plan is headed toward a three-step implementation process where the first year incorporates the freeze and the second and third years would iron out how much teachers are expected to contribute toward health insurance in the wake of budget shortfalls.
Park City School District teachers and their families currently receive free healthcare. Under the negotiations, the first year would incentivize teachers to only use their insurance benefits when necessary because in the second year of the contract the district will have either have more or less money to put toward the second year based on how much teachers used their benefits. If costs go down and teachers cut back, left over funding for health insurance will roll into the next year, cutting back what teachers will be expected to pay for the next year.
Talks with the district have been ongoing and frequent, with at least a meeting once a week since June, and the salary freezes allow discussions to continue, Mulick said. Whether a decision is reached in a month or five months, Mulick said the negotiations are meeting more middle ground.
Park City School District Superintendent Ray Timothy agreed.
“We want to make sure we do this right,” Timothy said, “in a way that would balance out. Our board has always had the goal of attracting and retaining the very best teachers possible. To do that our teachers need fair compensation.”
As negotiations continue, ideas such as educator evaluations that would reward high-performing teachers have been discussed as possible options, Timothy said. If students continued to test well with a specific teacher, they could be rewarded with performance bonuses.
“A lot of those types of discussions are underway,” Timothy said. “And it is exciting, I think it show teachers we do care.”