Westminster Teachers Approve New Contract

Amid cheers and smiles, Westminster School District teachers on Friday afternoon ended their yearlong battle for a pay raise and a new contract.

By a 209 to 9 secret ballot, the teachers approved a new three-year contract that gives them a 5% pay increase retroactive to last year, plus an immediate 1.5% pay raise for the current year.

The contract contains reopener clauses that provide for negotiations for an even higher pay raise this year for the 340 elementary teachers in the district. Any pay raise for the 1988-89 school year would also be arranged during reopened talks.

The school administration said the settlement is more expensive than originally planned in the current budget. About $100,000 must therefore be cut from the budget, an administration official said. The items to be cut have not yet been decided.

For their part, the teachers did not get the 6.5% retroactive pay raise for last year they had demanded. And their union failed in its effort to get “agency fees,” a term for requiring mandatory fees of teachers who do not join the union.

Nonetheless, the teachers were in a jubilant mood Friday afternoon as they overwhelmingly voted to approve the pact.

Teachers now average $30,000 a year in the school district, which has kindergarten through the eighth grade. Their last contract expired July 1, 1986.

Negotiators reached agreement Friday morning, only hours before the teachers gathered at 2:30 p.m. to hold a strike vote. As it turned out, the mass meeting of teachers at the Peek Colonial Terrace Room in Westminster turned into a ratification vote for the new contract.

The 11th-hour settlement, which both sides called a “good compromise,” ended a stalemate. The teachers had until Friday insisted on a 6.5% pay raise retroactive to last year, and the administration had said it could afford no more than 5%.

The elementary schools in Westminster thus will open Tuesday without the specter of teachers on strike. The administration had vowed to open the schools as scheduled, even if the teachers had walked out. But Friday’s settlement came as a big relief, said Barbara Winars, the district’s personnel services administrator.

“We feel this is a good solution to the impasse,” Winars said. “Our board will meet at 10 o’clock Saturday morning to ratify this new contract.”

But while pleased that a strike was averted, the district administration faces some budget cuts to be able to pay the teachers the raise. Winars said the district must cut at least $100,000 from the district’s $20 million budget for the current school year.

“We haven’t decided yet where the cuts will be made,” said Cynthia Arthur, a member of the school district’s Board of Trustees.

She added that she was pleased that the contract had been ratified by the teachers. “We’re glad we’re off on the right foot,” she said.

While the overwhelming majority of teachers at the Friday meeting were happy about the new contract, some criticism surfaced.

Some teachers wondered aloud “if it will take 15 more months” for the reopeners in the new contract to bring about a second round of pay increases for this year. Karen Russell, head of the Westminster Teachers Assn. bargaining team, responded that four days of negotiations are already scheduled within the next two weeks.

“How did we fare on agency fees?” another teacher asked at the mass meeting.

“We didn’t,” Russell responded.