Kalispell board, teachers ratify continued contract

Kalispell teachers won’t receive raises to their base pay next year, after a school board vote Tuesday night.

Kalispell Public Schools’ board of trustees unanimously approved an offer from Kalispell Education Association to roll over the teachers’ contracts from this year.

That means teachers, while still receiving automatic increases for accruing additional experience and education, won’t receive raises to their base salaries. They will also cover increases in health insurance premiums.

Teachers approved the offer by a vote of 262 to 7, association President Mike Thiel said. It is the first time in 17 years that Kalispell teachers won’t receive base-pay raises.

Automatic salary increases are expected to cost the district about $350,000 next year. The district anticipates about 45 teachers will receive a raise for earning additional education.

About 65 percent of the district’s teachers will receive increases for accruing more experience.

The 35 percent who won’t receive pay increases primarily teachers who are no longer part of the salary schedule. Off-schedule teachers have more than 17 years of experience or have at least 11 years of experience and are no longer accumulating postgraduate credits.

Those teachers will not receive a raise of any kind next year.

While trustees all praised the union for volunteering to forgo salary negotiations, some board members said the district should look at stipends teachers receive for extracurricular activities, including for coaching and serving as department chairs.

“I do think at some point, we would like to have a conversation about the stipends — not that anybody feels like coaches and department heads are being paid too much. They probably aren’t being paid enough,” Alice Ritzman said.

She said the district should look at the overall budget and the amount of time teachers who are also coaches spend outside the classroom.

“If the statistics are right and kids are affected when their teacher is gone more than 10 days out of the year, we have to have that discussion, because some kids are being grossly underrepresented by their teachers by the amount of time they’re out of the classroom,” Ritzman said.

The budget impact comes from paying substitute teachers, she added.

Rob Keller said he would rather wait to approve the contract next week, after voters decide whether to pass the district’s nearly $6 million building reserve levy request.

If the levy fails, the district expects to have to trim about $433,000 from its general fund budget to cover necessary building and technology maintenance. That would bring the 2011-12 deficit to a minimum of about $900,000.

If that happened, the district might want to be able to negotiate with teachers to pay less money for accruing experience and education or to ask staff to contribute more toward benefits, Keller said Wednesday.

Most of the district’s general fund budget is spent on salaries and benefits.

Keller on Tuesday suggested the district consider a 10 percent reduction in stipends, which could save tens of thousands of dollars in the general fund budget. If the district approved the contract as is, officials would have to cut several stipend positions — and possibly entire activities — to save the same amount of money, he said.

But Superintendent Darlene Schottle cautioned trustees about not accepting the union’s offer. Trustees could not look at one component of the contract without opening the entire document, she said.

“That would mean the offer would be off the table,” Schottle said. “How KEA might react is up to them. They don’t have to leave this on the table.”

Trustees agreed they needed to discuss stipends in the future but vote on accepting the teachers’ offer that night. The board voted 10-0 to approve the offer; trustee Mary Ruby was absent.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.