School district officials make teacher contract negotiation details public in letter to the community

Note: The original article stated that the Wenatchee School District had a budget reserve of 20 percent instead of 11 percent. This version has been corrected.

Wenatchee School District contract negotiations with the teacher’s union still remain at a standstill, the two sides still very much apart on key issues, forcing the district to make details of the negotiations public.

District Superintendent Brian Flones released an open letter to the community on Friday, Sept. 4, detailing the steps the district was taking, assuring that a fair settlement would be reached, and affirming that “providing our staff with fair compensation and reasonable working conditions,” was a district priority.

According to the WSD website, the teacher’s union proposal would have an estimated cost of almost $3.9 million, over two years. The district’s proposal has an estimated cost of almost $2.2 million, leaving the two sides $1.7 million apart.

In the open letter, Flones said the demands the union are placing on the district would create “a position of financial insolvency,” for the school district.

“It is becoming more evident that the approach to collective bargaining across the state is to move to mediation and then vote to strike if an agreement is not reached in an attempt to pressure the state legislature to move more swiftly in fully funding education as ordered by the Supreme Court through the McCleary decision,” Flones wrote. The state Supreme Court issued a $100,000-a-day fine against the legislation for failing to comply with two voter initiatives to reduce class sizes.

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We remain hopeful that the District will be a willing partner in the mediation process so we can all turn our attention back to what we love – serving the students and families of our community.

— Kris Cameron

Wenatchee educators had voted unanimously for mediation on the day their contract expired, Aug. 31. The negotiations will be mediated by Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) Labor Relations Mediator Emily Martin. Negotiations will resume Thursday, Sept. 1.

The teacher’s union released a letter in response last night. Wenatchee Education Association (WenEA) President Kris Cameron addressed claims of the collective bargaining strategy being “mediation and then vote to strike,” calling them “patently false and insulting to local educators.”

The district has a budget reserve of 11 percent, four times the recommended minimum, as well as $6 million dollars of additional state funding, according to Cameron.

“The District could easily make progress on class size, teacher workload and compensation beyond what they are proposing without significant reductions (if any) to current services or creating financial risk,” Cameron wrote in the open letter.

According to Cameron, the teacher’s union was not informed of the decision to make the negotiation details public.

“The issues on which we are far apart are the same issues we have been dealing with for decades. The difference is that now we have the revenue to make substantial progress to resolve them,” Cameron wrote. “We remain hopeful that the District will be a willing partner in the mediation process so we can all turn our attention back to what we love – serving the students and families of our community.”