On Dec. 22, the Edina School Board unanimously voted in favor of a new teacher contract, which will be valid until June 30, 2025. Education Minnesota/Edina (EME), the teacher’s union, voted and achieved majority approval on the contract on Dec. 21. The decision marks the end of a multi-month negotiation process between EME and the Edina Public School District.
An important goal for the union and the district was to make teachers’ salaries competitive with neighboring districts. “We have to be able to attract and retain the best teachers possible in order to ensure that we have an academic environment that serves the needs of all of our students,” EPS Director of Human Resources Sonya Sailer said.
EME president Jason Dockter noted the improvements to the salary schedule, particularly for starting teachers. The salary schedule is organized into steps and lanes. A teacher’s lane is determined by their level of education, and they move down a step for every year of service. Teachers’ salaries increase as they shift lanes and move steps. The new contract focused some of its most significant salary increases on the entry-level steps, which were “much lower” than neighboring schools according to Sailer. Additionally, the contract contains new salary steps after 25 and 30 years for the district’s most senior teachers.
Because many nearby school districts have yet to settle their contracts, it’s difficult to know exactly where EPS stands in terms of comparing salary schedules. “We made up a bunch of ground. Is there still ground to be made up? That’s also true,” Dockter said. “Unfortunately, we had fallen so far behind that districts we normally don’t compare ourselves to had not only made up ground but had started to do better.”
Sailer said that maintaining fair, competitive salaries and benefits is even more important due to the ongoing labor shortage. “Every employer has changed the way that employers need to look at prioritizing salary and benefits,” Sailer said. “Schools [are] in a unique position in that the funding they have comes directly from the state…But our state in this last session certainly provided some additional funding, which was incredibly helpful. And then we have to just look at prioritizing to ensure that we are treating our employees fairly.”
The additional funding and other changes in Section 179A in the 2023 Minnesota statutes contributed to a lengthened settlement process. According to Dockter, while it’s not unusual to see a contract being reached this late in the school year, Edina has historically reached a contract settlement relatively quickly. He said that settling early may contribute to why EPS has fallen behind in competitive salary schedules. “This time around, we had done a lot of work upfront, collecting data and having conversations about ‘Look, here’s the actual numbers, here’s how much we [have] fallen behind,’” Dockter said.
In addition to updating the salary schedule, the new contract implements initiatives including a pilot program for phased retirement. Veteran teachers are typically at the bottom of the salary schedule, the most expensive. With phased retirement, they would voluntarily move to the first step on the salary schedule and work less than the usual 184 duty days. Dockter said that instead of teaching classes, these teachers would help take the workload off their colleagues by providing intervention or assessment services, or stepping in as substitutes if necessary. This allows the district to retain talents and knowledge while pursuing a replacement teacher who can be mentored by the retiring teacher. The program is in place for the upcoming school year and will be renegotiated, along with the contract, in 2025.
This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on January 25, 2024.
