Canton schools settle 3-year contract with teachers

The Canton School Committee has reached an agreement with the Canton Teachers Association on a new three-year contract that takes effect on September 1, 2019 and runs through August 31, 2022.

The contract covers all Unit A employees, which includes approximately 300 teachers, nurses, and other education personnel. The agreement is being called a win-win for both sides as it gives the School Department fiscal certainty with the bulk of the labor costs (Unit A is the CTA’s largest bargaining unit) while providing union members with salary increases and other benefits.

The contract was approved by 98 percent of voting union members, according to School Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Fischer-Mueller and School Business Administrator Barry Nectow, who announced the deal at last week’s School Committee meeting. All five committee members also signed off on the new pact, which was negotiated over a two-year period.

The contract calls for pay raises of 2 percent in year one, 3 percent in year two, and 2 percent in year three. Employees’ salaries also increase based on service time (steps) and educational level (lanes), and the new contract adds one new step above the existing 15 annual step increases.

Other provisions of the new contract include the following: an increase in the maximum reimbursement for courses and workshops from $1,250 to $2,500 per teacher per year; an increase in prep time for elementary teachers, now consisting of four 45-minute periods and one 30-minute period per week; decrease in teaching load for district-wide coordinators to 0.2 FTE by 2021; and a limit of two required faculty/department meetings per month.

The contract also includes changes pertaining to the length of the school day for teachers in anticipation of time changes proposed for the 2020-21 school year. The proposal calls for a 10-minute increase to the student day at GMS (starting five minutes earlier and ending five minutes later) and a five-minute increase at CHS (ending five minutes later). If those changes were to take effect, GMS teachers would report five minutes earlier but their after-school period would remain the same, resulting in a net increase of five minutes. At CHS, the student day would be five minutes longer but the after-school period for teachers would be unchanged …

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Posted by Mike Berger on Jul 19 2019. Filed under News, Schools. Both comments and pings are currently closed.