School Board ratifies teacher contract after 15 months

PALMER — After over 19 months of contract negotiations, the Mat-Su Borough School Board voted 5-1 to ratify the contract agreement with the Matanuska-Susitna Education Association.

Board Member Ole Larson was the lone ‘no’ vote and Board Vice President Jim Hart was absent from the meeting. MSEA President Dianne Shibe and MSBSD Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani announced the tentative agreement at a joint press conference on Sept. 24. After reaching a tentative agreement, the document was finalized and published on Sept. 28 and sent out to district staff the next day. The information was included in the School Board packet on Oct. 1 and posted on the front page of the district’s website on Oct. 9.

Trani said that MSBSD Attorney Saul Friedman said the district had done more than an adequate job of informing people about the tentative agreement.

“Tonight is a very important vote. Your vote is not simply about increasing compensation for your employees, your vote is about valuing the work of these employees,” said Shibe. “You cannot compensate educators for their true value, but you can compensate them for their work. Please vote to accept this contract.”

The contract is retroactive to the summer of 2019 and runs through 2021 with a 2 percent increase each year among other changes. The MSEA members had been working under a status quo agreement since the last contract ran out in the summer of 2019 and have been working without a contract for 15 months. Just after the MSEA had taken a strike vote of its membership that passed overwhelmingly, the vote to ratify the tentative contract passed with 97 percent voting in favor.

“I think it helped generate some trust and respect in him [Trani] which is very important being a new guy and all that so I was glad to see that,” said Shibe. “I think that one of the things our members finally said is that no, we’re not going to do that anymore. The past year matters and so I think that is a big thing that is coming out of this and we expect that to be the new tradition and to carry over into the next bargain.”

The contract was then presented to the school board on Oct. 7 and debated by the board, detailing the approximately $19.5 million per year the contract will cost the district. As part of his Superintendent’s report on Wednesday, Trani presented a graph including the increases in teacher pay since 2008, including state funding, borough funding and the Consumer Price Index average for teacher pay that nearly identically followed the MSEA line.

“We have a revenue problem and we’ve had a revenue problem for a long time,” said Trani. “Luckily, Mat-Su has been growing. Your enrollment has been growing and so cuts have been being made for a long time right, like for a decade, but it’s been easily masked because you’ve been growing.”

Trani said that though the Borough funding has increased in recent years, the Base Student Allocation has fallen flat and to predict that the BSA would remain at the level it currently is may be wishful thinking. Trani said that the ways to match revenues to expenditures and balance the budget are to find efficiencies, program changes and finally cuts to expenditures without new revenue sources.

“I think this is something to be proud of for the district. Over along period of time you’ve done a good job of trying to keep your most valuable employees whole with regard to their earnings relative to time,” said Trani. “Was it too much or was it too little, it kind of feels like it’s Goldilocks-y to me. It feels like it’s just right.”

Trani said that the district would have to be judicious about making changes to the expenditures and that efficiencies were the best way to try to balance the budget.

“My compass has always been I choose the cuts that impact the kids the least,” said Trani. “Recognizing that every single thing that we do in the district is there to support kids, so any cut we make hurts kids.”