WHEN WE STAND UNITED, WE CAN PREVAIL
FUNDING FOR SALARY INCREASES
The district anticipates only a 1% increase for the 2024-25 school year. A 1% raise would be an average increase of $33 per paycheck for Highly Effective teachers.
We are doing our due diligence and have expressed initial concerns to the district about their underlying math. In particular, we have the following concerns about the district’s notion that 3% of the 9% raise should be counted against teachers in this negotiation:
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The district says they “paid in advance” or “fronted” 3% of the 9% salary increase CTA negotiated for the 2023-24 school year. What the district means is that they used non-recurring funds to pay for the 3% in 2023-24 and claim they will need to use recurring funds in 2024-25.
The 3% has nothing to do with negotiated contract language– it is how the district has chosen to describe its ability to fund raises for teachers in the coming school year.
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Your Union expressed initial concerns about whether the 9% budgeted for salary increases resulted in an actual increase to payroll of 9%. Here’s why: the bargaining unit decreased from the last time we costed out the 2023-24 agreement to the current negotiations. In addition, there’s also attrition as teachers leave the district and are replaced by lower-paid teachers. Finally, teachers without evaluations are not eligible to receive the performance-based raises.
Taken together, our initial estimates show that the actual increase to payroll is around 7%, short of the 9% initially budgeted by the district.
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Our analysis is consistent with what was reported by the credit-rating agency Moody’s in their updated credit analysis of OCPS published in May 2024. As the report says:
“The district anticipates that budget savings from vacant positions will help fund the current [9%] salary increase.”
The district also stated they will not put an official economic proposal on the table until after July 19th, a date when they say they’ll have final budget information.
CTA has said from the beginning that our goal is to complete negotiations by the time school starts.
ADVANCED DEGREE SUPPLEMENT
CTA and FEA have advocated on your behalf with the district and state about the restrictions on the advanced degree supplement. CTA President Clinton McCracken raised this concern with the Superintendent multiple times in one-on-one meetings and then again to other district leadership prior to the last bargaining session. We are thrilled the district and the state have FINALLY seen the light and realized recognizing all advanced degrees is the right thing to do. CTA signed a tentative agreement on June 17, 2024 and on June 27, 2024 an MOU was signed to start the process of awarding the supplement once the school year starts.
OCTOBER PROFESSIONAL DAY MOVE TO APRIL
CTA proposed to move the October Professional Day (teacher non-workday) to April and the district has agreed to this CTA proposal and signed an MOU to implement this into the next year’s calendar. The calendar is already published for the 24-25 school year and people have already made plans based on it. This change would be implemented in the 25-26 school year.
DISTRICT PROPOSES TO REMOVE EVALUATION RIGHTS
What would it mean to lose almost the entire Evaluations Article in your contract? The district isn’t proposing to replace any of this stricken language; they would have complete control over the system that determines your possible salary increases. OCPS would only have to “confer” with the union before making changes. Things in the article they are proposing to delete include all timelines, limiting the number of observations you can have, ensuring that you can request an additional observation and the lowest score being dropped, language that helps increase your final evaluation score, and more. As we said at the table, while the law now says that the district CAN do this, they aren’t required to. Over and over when asked why the district is proposing to do this, the answer was because we can. This says a lot about how teachers are valued.
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Click HERE to add your name to show your support for our bargaining pillars and proposals.
The next bargaining session is July 9th at the CTA office starting at 9am. We invite members of our bargaining unit to attend to show support! We are stronger together!
