CC Board approves teachers’ contract; no agreement reached with support staff

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Board of Education approved a new master contract with district teachers on Friday morning, just over an hour before new collective bargaining legislation was signed into law by Gov. Terry Branstad.

The one-year contract, negotiated Thursday night with administration and the Charles City Community Education Association, offers a 1.19 percent total package increase of $114,111.

A contract settlement was not reached on Thursday night with the support staff negotiation team, and approval of a support staff master contract was removed from the Board agenda Friday morning.

“We just could not find a common path to get to a settlement,” Superintendent Dr. Dan Cox said after the meeting. “It just really stopped.”

“The Support Association wanted a settlement last night. It is unfortunate one couldn’t be reached,” negotiations team member Diane Hobert said in an email to the Press.

With a new law on Iowa’s books taking effect immediately, district administration and the Charles City Community Educational Services Association will have to restart the bargaining process. Health insurance benefits and working conditions will no longer be open to negotiation under the law; everything not covered by collective bargaining will go into an employee handbook or “some other type of document” in the district, Dr. Cox said.

There is no clear timeline on when negotiations will begin or what kind of deadline the district and support staff will need to reach, Dr. Cox said: “That is a good question that needs to be answered.”

“There’s a lot of unknowns, and we just really don’t know how all of us is going to move forward,” Dr. Cox said.

“We’ve never experienced anything like this,” negotiations team member Jamie Meighan said. “As of right now, we’re waiting to see what the next step is from our consultant in Clear Lake, to see what he recommends next.”

Board approval for the teaching staff contract was passed 4-0 with one board member abstention. Board member Robin Macomber, who phoned in from Osage to take part in the meeting, said that the new law doesn’t prevent administration from having discussions outside of negotiations with district staff over issues like benefits.

“Even though we may no longer be able to negotiate with insurance, we still can have a conversation as a team with them, and what they’re looking at today isn’t because we were held to get something done in a rush,” Macomber told the board. “I think we would have come to this agreement even if we wouldn’t have been rushed.”

Branstad signed the legislation into law privately over the Friday noon hour, announcing it in a press release with Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds after the fact.

“These necessary reforms to our antiquated 43 year old public employee collective bargaining law bring fairness for Iowa taxpayers and flexibility to public employees,” Branstad said in a statement.

“These changes will improve our educational system by giving local districts the ability to recruit and retain the best teachers in every classroom across the state,” Reynolds said. “This new, balanced system is something all Iowans can celebrate.”