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Lakeland, teachers reach agreement

by BRIAN WALKER/bwalker@cdapress.com
| August 22, 2014 9:00 PM

RATHDRUM - The Lakeland Joint School District and the Lakeland Education Association teachers union have reached a tentative agreement for the upcoming year that includes a 1 percent base salary hike for all employees.

The tentative agreement, which comes just more than a week before the start of the school year, also includes funding steps for experience and education. The agreement makes no changes in the insurance plan.

The LEA, which has about 250 full-time teachers who will be covered with the agreement, will vote on the proposal on Thursday before it can be finalized.

The tentative deal comes after six meetings, including the last two with a federal mediator present.

"The goal of both sides was to find resolution before the start of the school year," said Tom Taggart, the district's finance director. "Nobody wanted it hanging over their heads when there's other things to concentrate on."

Taggart said despite both sides being entrenched on their proposals, the talks remained "civil and professional" throughout the process.

The district finally agreed to pay for a 7.4 percent increase in the employees' base insurance plan. The increase equates to about $85,000.

"At the end of the day, that's what they needed to go back to their membership," Taggart said. "We had proposed to not cover the entire amount and change the coverage to a higher deductible."

However, even with the salary step for experience in the tentative agreement, some teachers remain as many as two steps behind due to severe cuts and frozen steps in recent years.

"We presented what we felt what we could do financially," Taggart said. "And they looked at it from a fairness standpoint, that they should get back to where they were before (the recession). We understand that, but are still limited on resources. We wanted to restore those steps and we will, but we just can't do everything we want to yet."

Teachers can receive salary bumps with experience and education steps, merit pay and base salary raises.

"We didn't spend a lot of time on the base salary increase, but mostly on insurance and the frozen steps," Taggart said, adding that the budget approved in June was built on the 1 percent base salary hike.

The salary adjustments in the tentative agreement are in addition to "leadership premium" funds approved by the 2014 Legislature and awarded to teachers who go above and beyond their assigned duties.

Leadership funding can't be spent on across-the-board raises and is not subject to the collective bargaining process

Districts can award premiums of $850 to $5,838, although some districts' premiums will cap at $2,000. Lakeland received a total of $212,000 in leadership award funds. Such money was previously distributed based on test scores.

"We pointed out that the leadership funds would've paid for restoring one of the experience steps, but we don't have control over where the state put those resources," Taggart said.

Shannon Hall of the LEA couldn't be reached for comment on Thursday.

Neither classified employees nor district administrators fall under the negotiated agreement. Administrators will receive a 1.5 percent salary hike and classified employees will receive 1.5 to 4 percent. Neither of those groups receive education or experience steps to increase their salaries.

Post Falls reached an agreement with its teachers union in June.