After more than a year of fruitless negotiations, members of the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) have this evening overwhelmingly ratified a two-year contract agreement with the Sacramento City School Board.
By an 84.4% margin, teachers voted to approve the new agreement during an all-member meeting at Hiram Johnson High School. The Sacramento City Unified School Board must now ratify the agreement for it to take effect.
The tentative contract agreement was reached after 11:30 p.m. Sunday night with the help of Assembly Member Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who mediated the dispute.
The teachers approved a contract agreement that protects their health benefits, provides additional pay for additional work, and requires the district to collaborate on key changes to the educational day.
"We are extremely grateful to Assembly Member Darrell Steinberg for helping bring about this tentative settlement," says Marcie Launey, SCTA President. "We are recommending that our bargaining unit members approve the settlement, which protects their benefits, maintains the principle of additional pay for additional work, and commits the district to collaboration on future changes in the instructional day."
The tentative agreement contains none of the take-backs that the district had initially proposed, including a freeze on teachers' year-to-year step increases. Other take backs that were defeated would have reduced teachers' health benefit protections and raised their out-of-pocket health care costs.
The two-year agreement, which runs from July 1, 2002-June 30, 2004,
- Maintains teachers' year-to-year step salary increases and provides salary incentives to senior teachers who announce their intention to retire.
- Maintains current health benefits programs with no increases in co-payments or caps. It phases out one Health Net T2 program as of November 1 and transitions members into the other two health benefit plans.
- Provides 15 additional minutes per day of instruction for high school students and pays teachers proportionately for the additional work.
- Allows teachers to vote on changes at their site relating to changes in scheduling and planning time.
- Continues at SCTA's insistence a successful Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program.