Westbrook teachers finally have a new contract.

The Westbrook School Committee voted 5-0 Thursday to approve a collective bargaining agreement with the Westbrook Education Association. The association also voted, 107-2, in favor of the proposed contract Tuesday in a closed meeting. The two parties have been negotiating for more than a year, and teachers worked with an expired contract for nearly 300 days.

The agreement covers nearly 260 employees – more than half the staff in Westbrook schools. Their previous contract expired last August. When routine negotiations and mediation failed, the two parties turned to a state panel to resolve their dispute, a step taken by only a small number of districts each year. The battle became public this spring when teachers protested at a Westbrook School Committee meeting and outside their schools. But the Maine Labor Relations Board sided with the district on several key issues in May.

Both parties said the financial components of the contract – salary increases and benefits – already had been decided. The document approved this week expires in 2020 and includes annual raises between 1.5 percent and 2 percent. It also added short-term disability insurance, a compromise offered by the district instead of the sick leave bank the association requested.

Officials could not discuss confidential negotiations while they were ongoing, but the decision from the state labor board revealed more details about the conflict.

The association wanted to add language to the contract about teacher workload and scheduling. For example, two new sections would have spelled out the amount of preparation time afforded to teachers. One would have compensated teachers at a reduced rate for extra hours if their work days were extended. Another would have slightly increased pay for teachers with classes over a certain size – 15 students for kindergarten teachers and 18 students for teachers in other grades.

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However, district leadership argued those ideas fell under the umbrella of education policy, which cannot be bargained and must be set by the school committee. On seven of nine proposals, the state labor board agreed. The parties came to their agreement on the remaining two proposals and other unresolved issues within the last two weeks.

Superintendent Peter Lancia said he hopes the budget that was approved by voters this week will address some of the concerns that could not be in the contract. For example, two new teachers at the elementary school will allow for more prep time at that level, he said.

Lancia said the demonstrations in recent weeks were “a learning experience for everybody.”

“If anything, it opens the door for more communication with our association, so that we can always be paying attention to the needs of our employees,” Lancia said.

Jared Ruthman, the president of the association and a high school history teacher, said he hopes district officials and teachers continue these conversations about their work environment even though negotiations are over.

“From our perspective, we’ve been able to negotiate a contract that begins to address some of the conditions that teachers face in the modern era,” Ruthman said. “There’s a lot of dynamics in the classroom that put a lot of extra pressures on teachers, and they haven’t gotten the supports to meet the demands that are placed on them. These are state and national issues regarding education.”

Megan Doyle can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

mdoyle@pressherald.com

Twitter: megan_e_doyle


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