Teacher pact in Fosston

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Aug. 16, 1996

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

The Fosston School Board and teachers struck a tentative settlement this week after almost a year of on-again, off-again negotiations. The district was one of only a handful that has not negotiated a contract for the academic years of 1995-96 and 1996-97.

In a process that involved three negotiation sessions -- including one state-mediated session -- this summer alone, the teachers and the school board reached comprises on three contentious issues that had put the contract on hold since last fall.

At dispute were an early retirement incentive package, the teachers' salary schedule and contract language.

The teachers held an informal vote on Monday on a tentative contract. The contract could not be finalized, said teachers' negotiating representative Tom Holland, because, according to the contract bylaws, information regarding any summer negotiations meetings must be mailed to teachers 20 days in advance of the meeting.

So, although it was not a formal vote, Holland said most of the teachers agreed to settle with the compromises. A formal vote will be taken Aug. 29 during the teachers' in-session days before school starts.

Holland said he is optimistic the teachers will ratify the contract, but it would only take one vote against it to put the two sides back at the negotiating table. If the contract is ratified, it would then be up to the school board, and Holland said he believes the board will approve.

The contract negotiations started last fall and became more of an issue when they extended past the state mandated deadline of Jan. 15. The state withheld $20,000 in aid because the district had not settled by the deadline. The amount of aid a school receives is based on a per pupil basis.

Board Chairman Jon Rustad said the negotiations were tough because of the pressure of the deadline and knowing the district would be penalized if the contract was not settled.

"There is no incentive for the teachers to settle," he said. "They don't have to pay anything. However, that's not their fault either."

The main "sticking point" of the contract for the teachers was the debate over an early retirement incentive package. Three contract periods ago, in 1992-93, the Fosston School District was more than $300,000 in debt. To decrease the debt load, the district offered some of the more experienced, higher-salaried teachers a severance package of $35,000 over several years to retire. It helped, and four years later the district is solvent.

The teachers wanted to sustain some type of early retirement incentive package, but according to Rustad, the board felt it was not cost effective. He said the district loses when experienced teachers retire just to make way for less expensive, less experienced teachers, and the difference in salaries is not great enough to justify the change.

"Those types of programs are not a big savings for school districts," he said.

The tentative compromise is that teachers will pay the greater into a tax-sheltered annuity, with the district matching part of the money. However, the teachers felt this plan was unfair to some of the more experienced teachers who would not have many years to build up the annuity.

In their cases a deal was struck that, in addition to the annuity, a percentage of their unused sick days would be brought back, Rustad said.

The teachers' salary schedule was also affected by the restructuring of finances in 1992. In addition to some of the teachers retiring, the entire staff took a pay freeze for a contract period. Holland said that now the teachers want their contracts to be as competitive with other area schools as they were in 1992.

Rustad said the board appreciated the pay freeze the teachers accepted, but there was no way the district could make that gap up in one contract. He said it would cost the district too much in too little time. The tentative contract calls for $150,000 to be split among the district's teachers.

The teachers would have liked a bigger increase in salaries and board funding of more of the retirement packages, Holland said. However, in negotiations, no one gets everything, he added.

"The teachers are the optimists, but until the teachers vote I would hate to say we have a contract," he said. "Realistically, it would be good for the school and the teachers to have this settled. It would be a much more positive atmosphere."

"I'm not super enthusiastic about the settlement," Rustad said, "but it's something we can live with and the teachers can live with."

It may be a contract both sides have to live with because negotiations for the next two-year contract period begin in a few months.