Teachers, BOE ink agreement on salaries, benefits

Jun. 7—The Cumberland County Board of Education and teachers have reached an agreement on a three-year memorandum of understanding.

The agreement approved May 27 will remain in effect through May 27, 2014.

"I feel like it was a productive collaboration between the groups," said Director of Schools Ina Maxwell.

Julia Timson, president of CCEA, said, "The meetings were very productive and congenial. I am very happy with the collaboration. We did not get everything we asked for, but we definitely made some large strides forward. We also opened the dialogue for more movement in the future. I am grateful to the team for all the hard work. I am looking forward to working with all of them in the future."

The agreement covers teacher salary, salary schedule, grievance procedures, insurance and other benefits, working conditions and facilities provided to teachers.

The collaborative conferencing process and memorandum of understanding replaced negotiated contracts in Tennessee in 2011, following changes in state law.

As part of the work to develop the agreement, teachers and administrators also proposed a new salary schedule that will increase pay for early- and late-career teachers.

Dubbed the "recruit and retain" pay plan, the salary schedule keeps a planned 3% raise for all employees. It increases the starting pay for teachers with a bachelor's degree by another 2.8% to exceed the state's minimum teacher salary, $38,500, with 1% increases for five years to meet the state salary minimum for a teacher with six years experience, $40,810.

The salary for beginning teachers with a master's degree would increase by .62% to meet the state minimum of $41,045. Step increases the first five years would be 1.4-1.5% with a six-year salary of $44,807, the state minimum.

There are no changes to the first five steps for the salary schedule for teachers with an Ed.S. or doctorate.

Teachers in years 20-25 would have .5% step increases, with a top-out salary of $49,153 for a teacher with a bachelor's degree and $54,963 for a teacher with a master's degree.

The board approved the salary schedule as part of its approval of the 2021-'22 general purpose school budget.

The board also approved a differentiated pay plan for the 2021-'22 school year. This is required by the state, with $100,000 available to compensate teachers for additional work or help hire teachers for hard-to-staff positions.

The plan provides $96,800 to pay teachers for taking on additional responsibilities, including $400 annual stipends for 148 lead teachers, 26 textbook leaders, 12 school improvement plan chairmen, 24 schoolwide positive behavior support chairmen, 11 district comprehensive special education teachers, 12 school-level IT leads, and 9 On My Way 2 K facilitators. The plan also provides $500 to six portfolio peer reviewers.

The plan also reserves $3,000 to fulfill school system commitments to three teachers hired as part of a "hard-to-staff" incentive plan developed in 2017. The plan pays teachers hired under the plan $1,000 if they have a teacher effectiveness score of 3 in their third year teaching.

In other business, the board also approved the list of faculty and staff rehired for the 2021-'22 school year.

The school system projects it will need 9.5 fewer teachers next year than were employed this year.

Teresa Boston, 8th District representative, said there were 27 certified individuals who are not retained by the school system. The individuals were non-tenured teachers.

"Is that number included in our 362 teachers budgeted?" she asked.

Chief Financial Officer Kacee Harris said the school system employed 362 teachers in its general education budget. Due to a reduction in enrollment, the school system anticipates needing 352.5 teaching positions. It has included funding for eight additional teachers should enrollment increase.

"We hope that our 9.5 positions lost will be counted in that," she said.

Harris said in earlier meetings that the staffing reduction would be primarily handled through attrition. The school system is waiting to post job openings for the upcoming school year to allow for transferring tenured personnel to open positions.

"We want to make sure we take care of our tenured folks that may be in those positions that are cut," Harris said.

The board approved the list of rehired personnel with Boston voting no.

Heather Mullinix is editor of the Crossville Chronicle. She covers schools and education in Cumberland County. She may be reached at hmullinix@crossville-chronicle.com.