Decatur Education Association Saw Freeze in New Contract

The new Decatur Education Association contract is now posted on the district website. It covers last school year and the next three. During those 4 years, the salary schedule is frozen at the 2008-2009 school year contract levels.

For those unfamiliar with how teachers are paid, there is a chart, which you will find beginning on page 31 of the contract. With each year of teaching, salary goes up. With the attainment of benchmark educational levels, salary goes up. These are called 'step increases' and are zealously regarded as different from 'raises'. Only when the entire schedule increase, does the DEA consider it a raise. This is very different from all other employees in other careers, who pretty uniformly consider any increase in take home pay to be a raise.

So, the step increases remain for all teachers up to 20 years of service and a Masters plus 60 hours of education toward a Doctorate. Salaries range from $37,343 to $77,673. This, of course, does not include additional money awarded for extracurricular activity - supervision of clubs or coaching, for instance. A teacher moving from their first to second year of teaching would see an increase in pay of $1680, while a 19 year teacher transitioning into their 20th year would see an increase of $1120. Beyond 20 years, there is no change due to years of service. A first year teacher who earns a Masters Degree, gains $1240 a year. A 20 year or older teacher who earns a Masters Degree, gains $10,643. The schedule is in the contract for closer examination, if you are interested; again, beginning on page 31.

The district covers 86% of the cost of health and hospital insurance (page 8) for teachers. The new contract has some changes to that for the coming years. There are three levels of insurance plans offered - I, II, and III; with the Plan I level being the most expensive. Beginning with the 2010-2011 school year, a teacher may opt for a Plan I level, but the district will only pay up to 86% of the cost of a Plan II level. In addition, all teacher insurance enrollees will receive a payback of $30 per month (if they get the single plan), $50 per month (if they get the employee/spouse or employee/child plan), or $70 per month (if they get the family plan).

I did some calculations, using the insurance rates from the 2009-2010 school year. If a teacher enrolls in a Plan I level, it will cost $36.48 more per year for the single plan, $237.60 more for the employee/child plan, $285.12 more for the employee/spouse plan, and $176.40 more for the family plan over the costs for this past school year. However, with the additional paybacks, those enrolled in any of the Plan II or Plan III levels will see their insurances costs go down. For those teachers, a single plan will cost $360 less per year, employee/child or employee/spouse plan will cost $600 less, and a family plan will cost $840 less than this past year.

I did a very ballpark calculation, and it looks like roughly -- if more than 3 times as many teachers are enrolled in Plan I level as in the other two levels, the district saves money -- if fewer than 3 times as many teachers are enrolled in Plan I level as in the other two levels, the district loses money. I don't have the figures to know for sure, which case applies.

Other monetary impact items are those related to district contributions to a variety of retirement funds on behalf of the teacher (pages 6-7 and 10-11). Unless I missed something, these contributions add up to 8% of salary in the old contract and for the 2009-2010 school year under the new contract. That drops to 6.5% of salary for the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school year. For the 2012-2013 school year, it rises back to the 8% of salary level.

Along with these retirement fund contributions, the vesting period (the length of time it takes for a teacher to actually 'own' the money in the fund) has been shortened for the 401(a) fund (page 10). In the past, after 10 years a teacher was vested to the tune of 33.3%, after 15 years they were vested to 66.7%, and after 20 years they were vested in 100% of the fund balance. The new contract changes the vesting period to 50% after 5 years and 100% after 10 years of employment. The vesting period for the remaining retirement funds is unchanged from the old contract.

There are some other changes to committees and such, but the monetary changes are represented above.