FREEPORT — After nearly three years of negotiations, a vote to approve a teachers union contract in Regional School Unit 5 remains unresolved.

An initial count of union members’ balloting on whether to ratify the contract yielded a tie vote: 58-58.

“I’m an athlete, so I don’t like ties,” said Nancy Drolet, representative for the Coastal Education Association.

With a dead heat after the first ballot count, union members were stymied, but consultation with the Maine Education Association informed the union made up of Freeport, Durham and Pownal teachers that the contract is not ratified and the process is not over.

“We wanted a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ even if it was for one vote,” Drolet said.

The results were, in part, a matter of circumstance. One of the union’s roughly 129 voting members was stuck on a plane, others were sick and some union members who plan to leave the district felt “it wasn’t their contract to vote on,” Drolet said.

To give a shot at all votes being counted, the CEA plans to hold a vote over two days next week — Tuesday and Wednesday — to determine whether to accept the latest proposal in a years-long contract dispute.

Hank Ogilby, a Freeport High School teacher and lead negotiator for the teachers, wrote in an email Wednesday that meetings “to discuss where we stand” will take place before the two-day vote that he said will hope to draw more union members.

For now, Drolet said she’s seen the prolonged negotiations take a toll on morale at schools throughout the district.

“I’ve already seen agitation about this and I think we need some closure,” Drolet said. “People weren’t 100 percent giddy about this.”

Currently, all teachers in the three-town school district continue to work under extensions of previous contracts from before RSU 5 formed.

As part of Maine’s school consolidation law, the RSU is required to unify those contracts, though there is no specific timeline for doing so.

A result of those separate contracts is that teachers now work under different pay scales. Part of the process of a new contract is what district officials have called “leveling up,” which means bringing all teachers’ contracts up to the pay scale of, in this case, Freeport teachers.

But from a survey allowing comments alongside the ballot, Drolet said that the issue for most was not pay, but language related to working conditions.

Out of the 58 “no” votes, Drolet said that 46 members left comments along with their ballots.

One of the key issues, Drolet said, derives from disagreement about just what can be included in a contract — whether things such as the length of the school day should be specified in a contract or by education policy set by the RSU’s board of directors.

After RSU 5 and union negotiators agreed to a tentative deal in April, Ogilby said he had some concern headed into the vote that support would break down based on geography and pay.

“For Durham and Pownal, this might be a lot more attractive contract than for Freeport,” Ogilby said.

Teachers currently under the old Freeport contract make up about 74 percent of teachers in RSU 5, Ogilby said.

But along geographic lines, Drolet said, there were no clear trends or conclusions about the vote, with differences in opinion breaking down in various ways in each school building in Durham, Pownal and Freeport.

Drolet called the process “exhausting,” but said she’s still hopeful that the contract can be resolved next week.

And, at the very least, Drolet said the vote is a teachable moment.

“I told our social studies teachers that this is a good time to talk to students about the power of one,” Drolet said.

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