Daytona Beach, FL – Both sides return to the table in an increasingly contentious contract negotiation between Volusia County Schools and its teachers’ union.
VCS and the Volusia Teachers’ Organization will meet at 3:15pm Wednesday in DeLand to go over several issues, but it is teacher pay that has union officials up in arms.
In a recent appearance on WNDB’s Marc Bernier Show, VTO President Andrew Spar said the School Board isn’t living up to the promise it made last year of making pay raises for teachers a priority.
“Our district must focus on ensuring that we have the best public schools our children deserve,” Spar said. “To do this, we must retain and recruit the best teachers. Unfortunately, that is not happening in our district.”
VTO’s recent proposal to increase teacher pay by either 4% or 5% across the board was rejected by the district earlier this month, with VCS instead offering no pay increase for this school year.
On top of that, Spar says VCS wants its employees to pay between $1,200 and $4,500 for health insurance premiums beginning next school year in return for possible pay increases.
“That is a pay cut,” Spar stated. “Things are not getting better in Volusia. They are getting worse.”
Spar admitted that the union would consider making some changes to health insurance premiums that could save the school district money in the future, but the union won’t accept any plan that leads to less money in teachers’ pockets.
“It seems to me that our district wants to say [that] we will pay you worse than our surrounding counties [and] we will provide you with one of the worst benefits package of the surrounding counties [in] a place where most teachers already feel underappreciated,” Spar stated. “That does not sound like they want to keep or recruit teachers to our district.”
VCS officials said during the last school board meeting that 75% of the savings from their health insurance proposal would leave enough money free to offer a 3.15% pay increase for teachers, but Spar claims that would only net most teachers an extra $1,150 after taxes and retirement and that most teachers would actually lose money in the end.
VTO and VCS took nearly a year to negotiate the last deal, which saw teachers get an average of 2.78% in raises once it was approved by both sides last May. Those raises were retroactive since teachers continued to work without a contract in place.
That deal saw beginning teachers start out with a yearly salary of $37,000 – a $1,000 increase – and the implementation of state-mandated performance pay after union members refused to work past their mandatory hours for months and organized protests wherever the School Board met.
Copyright 2015 Southern Stone Communications.