No rancor over contract this time

YOUR SCHOOLS

Nearly three years after a contentious, weekslong teachers strike in the Reynoldsburg City Schools, everything about this year’s contract negotiation has been different.

Every single Reynoldsburg official sitting on the management side of the bargaining table was new this time. The sides reached a tentative agreement over four days in mid-July, and the agreement was ratified on Wednesday night by the Reynoldsburg Education Association. Next, the Board of Education plans to vote

on the contract on Aug. 4.

“The process was much more of a negotiation than in the past,” teachers union President Kim Cooper wrote in an email. “They listened to us, we listened to them. It was nice to be listened to.”

“It was important to us to make a statement,” said board President Joe Begeny. “We all had to come together on this. We couldn’t allow what happened the last time to happen this time.”

Under the proposed contract, the base pay for starting teachers would increase in August 2017 by 2.5 percent, to $41,596; in August 2018 by 2.25 percent, to $42,634; and by 2 percent in August 2019, to $43,487.

Teachers who experienced a step freeze on the pay scale in 2013-14 will recover a step.

Maximum class sizes are now called guidelines in the contract, instead of the 2014 language “aspirational goals.” A class-size cap was one demand of the teachers union in 2014 that led to the 15-day strike.

Begeny said he doesn’t think the district will ever reach the point of having hard caps, but “the point is to build toward a trust (between teachers and administration) that there shouldn’t be a need.”

Merit bonuses based on evaluations are gone. Teachers still can apply for a performance bonus if their students perform significantly better than expected, but the union now will help the administration decide on the criteria for the award.

If the district finds itself in the position of laying off teachers, the order of those layoffs will depend largely on seniority and less on teacher evaluations.

Teachers would be paid extra if they must take on an unassigned class in place of a planning period.

And teachers now would be protected from discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identification.

An analysis of exactly how much the new contract will cost was not available on Friday afternoon, but Begeny said that the contract and the district’s money management should guarantee that Reynoldsburg schools won’t need to go to the voters until at least 2023.

“That’s 13 years without a levy in the city of Reynoldsburg,” Begeny said. “You can’t find too many districts that can say that.”

Assistant Superintendent Jocelyn Cosgrave, Treasurer Tammy Miller and board members Rob Truex and Neal Whitman negotiated on the management side. They were represented by lawyers from Bricker & Eckler. Begeny, the board president, teaches in the Columbus City Schools and is a union member, and was not permitted to sit in.

When asked whether it was by design that the management side was completely different, Begeny said it was attrition that led to that situation.

Three of the five board members are different, and once they took office in early 2016, they immediately fired the district’s legal representation during the strike, Pepple & Waggoner.

District administrator Jana Alig, one of the 2014 negotiators, left Reynoldsburg schools for another job in June 2016, and in September 2016, the board paid her a $42,000 legal settlement to agree that she resigned voluntarily and would not sue.

Though Tina ThomasManning remains Reynoldsburg’s superintendent in name until July 31, she is no longer working in the central office and had no part in the negotiations. In June, she was given a legal settlement worth at least $200,000, including a $100,000 consulting contract and a $100,000 lump sum, after she threatened to sue for race and gender discrimination and retaliation.

Incoming Superintendent Melvin Brown has been working under a consulting agreement to sit in on the contract talks and for other work he has done. Since April, he has collected about $12,100 in consulting fees from Reynoldsburg schools.