The YME school district and its teachers were not able to agree on terms of a new contract by the state imposed January 15 deadline.
Negotiators for the YME school board and Education Minnesota-YME (EMYME), the local teachers’ union, had agreed on a tentative settlement last week. Members of the local teachers’ union voted on the proposed contract on the morning of Wednesday, January 13. When the ballots were counted the teachers had overwhelmingly rejected the contract offer.
Kim Sandry, the President of EMYME shared that the salary proposal was a major hurdle in ratifying the contract. She went on to explain that the contract proposal did have a stipulation to freeze teachers’ salaries at the steps they were on in the 2008-2009 contract for the first year (2009-2010) and an offer of a one-time stipend. “We asked for a percent increase only for those people with no steps built in.” In year two (2010-2011) the step increase would be included.
“I notified Mr. Stoeckman of the vote outcome right after the ballots were counted on Wednesday afternoon. I’m not sure where we go from here,” stated Sandry. “We both came further than anticipated,” stated YME School Board Chair Elmo Volstad about the progress made in a negotiation session that had been held on Friday, January 8. Volstad explained that the negotiators had gone beyond where both groups thought that they would go. “I was optimistic about the contract offer that the teachers were going to vote on.”
Volstad said that he received the news of the failure to ratify the contract on Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t know where it’s going from here.” He indicated that it is now a time to wait and see what the state legislature will do when it comes to school funding.
Both sides agreed to keep the specific terms of the contract offer confidential. As a result of the vote, the YME board cancelled the special meeting they had planned for purpose of ratifying the proposed contract. That meeting had been planned for Thursday, January 21. YME was among four other school districts in southwestern Minnesota including BOLD, Lac qui Parle Valley, Lincoln, and Luverne that did not make the deadline and will face a $25 per-pupil unit fine. Based on the $25 per-pupil unit fine, it is estimated that YME will have between $22,200 and $25,000 withheld in state funding because a contract was not ratified.
There were more than two dozen of the state’s 344 school districts that did not meet the deadline to have a contract in place.
