Contract maintains teachers’ health benefits, provides first
raise in four years
Hollister – The Hollister School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday night to approve the district’s tentative labor agreement with the Hollister Elementary School Teachers’ Association, giving educators their first wage increase in four years.
“We feel pretty good about this,” said HESTA President Jan Grist. “An important part of any job is vaildation, and granted we’re civil servants, so we don’t expect bonuses or a bunch of ‘job well dones,’ but an important part of that validation is in your salary. It’s a big deal.”
The new 2005-06 teacher contract will give educators a 4 percent salary increase retroactive to Jan. 23. According to Crates, teachers can expect to see a difference in their pay checks in mid to late spring, which will be the first raise teachers have enjoyed since 2002.
Teachers earning at the top of the pay scale will see their salary increase by about $3,120, from $78,000 to $81,120, for an increase of 4 percent.
A beginning teacher will receive a $1,567 raise, from $39,169 to $40,736. However, since the increase will take effect about halfway through this school year, teachers will see about half that money.
“Everyone is very pleased,” said Hollister School District Interim Superintendent Ron Crates. “Hopefully this is the start of a good cooperative attitude between the district, administration and the union.”
Negotiators from the district and HESTA reached an agreement early last week after five months of bargaining, which the teachers ratified Thursday and Friday. Of HESTA’s 301 teachers, 275 cast ballots on the proposal, showing overwhelming support for the contract with only two dissenting votes.
“It takes people of good will and firm resolve to reach an agreement like this,” said San Benito County Superintendent of Schools Tim Foley.
The district will only have to absorb half the cost of the salary increase this year because the school year is already half over. Teachers typically work 184 days, and Jan. 23 is the halfway point in the contracted year.
“I feel very good about this,” said HSD Board President Eugenia Sanchez. “The teachers really deserve a raise, and I’m happy to see that we’re in a position to give them one.”
Teachers will receive the same health benefits as they always have through the Self-Insured Schools of California, a collective of institutions that allows schools to pool their resources for insurance coverage. The policy has a cash value of $10,614 per teacher.
“We did really well,” said Grist. “We’re pleased that the district did its homework and made sure that we could get our raises without putting the district into a qualifying budget.”
HSD expects an overall salary cost of about $1 million this year, assuming that district administrators and classified staff – school employees who are not teachers – bargain for a similar, if not identical deal.
“It’s good to have this out of the way and done with,” said Foley. “Now we’ll have definite figures to plug into the (budget) equation.”
Though negotiations have taken place on and off since 2002, the process sped up fairly quickly after the beginning of the school year.
“It helps to have a new team, and new people at the table,” said Crates. “Everyone was committed to working together and problem-solving.”
Neither the district nor HESTA will have much time to celebrate the conclusion of these negotiations, however. In late April or early May the same negotiators from both sides will head back to the table to begin negotiations on a three-year labor contract for 2006-09.
