Forest Lake teacher deal may set tone for others

Cash-strapped school districts this year might reap unexpected windfalls from an unusual source: teacher pay.

As contract negotiations with teachers get underway, there are signs that local teacher unions will be willing to cut way back their demands for salary increases. In what might be the first of such Twin Cities-area agreements this year, Forest Lake teachers agreed May 27 to a two-year contract that gives them no cost-of-living salary increases for either 2009-2010 or 2010-2011.

Some officials think Forest Lake could serve as a bellwether for the rest of the Twin Cities metro area.

"It always seems like the first settlement is what the trend becomes," said Mike Roseen, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school board chairman. "If Forest Lake settles for zero-zero, I'm guessing that's going to be closer to the norm than not."

For many districts, teacher proposals might be so modest as to be unprecedented in the recent history of contract negotiations. If so, schools could end up saving millions of much-needed dollars over the next two years.

Most negotiations are just getting started. Two-year teacher contracts throughout Minnesota expire June 30, and state law dictates that new settlements must be reached by Jan. 15.

Still, some district-level teacher union representatives are already conceding that teachers can expect a lot less from bargaining this year than they've gotten in the past.

"We can't ask for what we did in the past," said Sandy Skaar, president of Anoka-Hennepin Education Minnesota, the local representing teachers in the state's largest school district.

Some school boards are so confident that their settlements will be more modest than in the past that they have included lower negotiated amounts in their budget projections. The Spring Lake Park School District, for instance, has included in its budget plan for next year lower-than-usual teacher pay increases. In St. Paul, the School District's disclosure that it planned to ask employees for a pay freeze to help whittle down a $25 million budget deficit irked union officials. Minneapolis schools officials would not comment on their upcoming contract negotiations.

State union officials say that, although contract negotiations are left up to the union locals, they frown on the idea of teacher pay freezes, even though school superintendents, other administrators, and even school board members throughout the metro area have announced their intentions to freeze their own pay.

"Administrators make more money than teachers do," said Education Minnesota President Tom Dooher.

Beyond the pay freeze, Forest Lake teachers agreed in the first year of their contract to give up "step" salary increases, which are tied to years of experience. They would continue to get "lane" salary increases, awarded to teachers for going back to college and earning more credits toward advanced degrees. In the second year of the contract, the "step" increases are reinstated. That translates into a 4.3 percent cost increase to the district over the two years of the contract. The previous two years' contract bumped up teacher pay costs 9.7 percent.

For the Forest Lake teachers, who approved the contract by a better than 2-to-1 margin, it was a matter of facing hard economic realities and trying to save teaching jobs.

"My gut feeling is that [teachers] understand what is going on in the economy," said Andy Stoyke, president of the Forest Lake Education Association and a first-grade teacher at Wyoming Elementary School. "Most of us have friends or family who have lost jobs, so we get it. ... Does anyone like a freeze? I don't think so. ... But saving jobs is a big deal, especially with the younger teachers."

By way of comparison, the Minnesota School Boards Association calculated that teacher contract settlements for 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 cost the average Twin Cities district about 8 percent more. Most recent figures show the average Minnesota teacher making $50,582, according to the Education Minnesota teachers union.

Anoka-Hennepin's Skaar would not say what the initial teacher offer -- to be presented in two weeks -- will be. Skaar, who has been involved in six contract negotiations with the board, says, though, that it won't match prior proposals.

"In all the time I've been on the bargaining team, we never have come forth with an initial proposal that will be as spare as this one will be. For us, it's a sign of the times."