Teachers to vote on offer

PALMER — Valley teachers may have something big to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

“We hope to have a general membership meeting prior to Thanksgiving,” Jill Showman, president of the Mat-Su Education Association teachers’ union said Monday.

At that meeting, or at least around that time, members will vote on whether to accept the contract that the union has negotiated with the school district.

There are, of course, a whole lot of things that have to happen before a contract is in place. The membership has to be informed of what conditions are in the contract. The school board has to take action. And, most immediately, the union has to make sure that its understanding of what the contract means squares with the district’s understanding.

“We’ve got some information going out to members,” Showman said, speaking as the photocopier churned out papers for distribution to members.

Last week, Showman sent out an announcement about the break in negotiations.

She said very little about specifics. Monday she was likewise not ready to discuss what is in the contract.

Nor was the district, whose spokeswoman Catherine Esary said she likely wouldn’t have much to say on the matter until next week.

The school board discussed the contract in last week’s meeting, but did so in a closed-door executive session.

If the contract is accepted it would mean an end to more than a year of negotiations between teachers and the district. The situation came to a head late last month with teachers talking, in no uncertain terms, about a strike. They showed up in force to the first meeting of the school board after two new members came to the body in this year’s election.

At that meeting, Superintendent Ken Burnley, who began his first school year heading up the district this fall, said he intended to go to the table and bargain

Prior to Burnley’s tenure, the overriding message from the district was that it could not afford any expansion of pay or benefits for staff, and the unions said the school district would not budge at the negotiating table.

The district’s other union, representing classified employees — the district’s term for support staff such as janitors and secretaries — has been without a contract for even longer than MSEA. Burnley was conciliatory in speaking of those negotiations as well.

Showman said Monday that the Classified Employees Association was sitting down that afternoon for a second round of meetings with the school district.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.