D-15 Teachers Union Approves 4-Year Contract

With two-thirds of District 15’s Classroom Teachers Council voting in favor Wednesday to accept a new four-year contract, contract negotiations between the school district and teachers union have ended, said D-15 Superintendent Scott Thompson.

Although the union’s 830 members have learned what salary and benefits are included in the contract, the full D-15 school board will consider voting on the contract at its next regularly scheduled June 13 meeting at 7 p.m. at Sundling Junior High. 

Major components of the contract will be communicated to the public that evening and whether some of the  would be restored, Thompson said.

In March,  and is using $3.4 million in reserves as part of district's effort to balance its budget and eliminate a projected $9.6 million deficit. District 15 has more than $50 million in reserves. School officials contend that unless dealt with, the structural deficit would quickly reduce the reserves to about $4.8 million in 2016.

School officials scaled back their first plan –  – . 

As part of the budget cuts laid out in March, plans involve:

• Converting all program assistants to part-time, saving about $1.258 million in benefit costs.
• Strictly adhering to class size targets, resulting in the elimination of 13 full-time staff members for a savings of $715,000. In the past, if a school was on the border of needing another teacher, the district would round up and add the staff member. Under the new policy, the district would round down.
• Increasing class sizes for kindergarten to sixth grade to 26 while class sizes for seventh and eighth grade would rise on average to 28 saving another $715,000.
• Eliminating 53 full-time teaching positions, although, 22 would be lost through attrition thanks to retiring teachers.