Sonoma Valley teachers weathered more than a year of tense negotiations before voting unanimously in April to approve a new contract, which provides salary increases of at least 9 percent over three years.
Teachers stuck to their goal of making salaries in the Sonoma Valley Unified School District comparable to other county districts. They hope that the improvements will help recruit and retain staff, says Mike Lyons, president of the 310-member Valley of the Moon Teachers Association (VMTA).
The district battled the teachers for months - at the bargaining table and in the local media. After reaching bargaining impasse in June 1999, a state mediator was called in. It was the mediator's proposed three-year settlement that was eventually accepted by teachers and the district.
"Our bargaining team did tremendous work," says Lyons. Teachers also reached out to the community. "We organized parents at the schools to support us. We realized that the community was on our side."
For this school year, teachers will get a 5 percent salary increase retroactive to July 1, 1999. For each of the next two years, they will get a 2 percent raise and 75 percent of all new unrestricted funding above the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) funding from the state.
Negotiations were complicated by declining enrollment in the district, which serves 4,800 students.
Lyons says negotiations reached a pivotal point at an emotional March 11 school board meeting where a school board member distributed copies of an inflammatory document he claimed was a bargaining strategy blueprint from CTA's parent organization, NEA. He then resigned from the board in bitterness over negotiations.
In separate letters to the editor of a local paper, Lyons and CTA President Wayne Johnson criticized the tactic of using this bogus and derogatory document.
"Interjecting this hoax into the contract negotiations was dishonest and unethical," Johnson wrote.
"News reports of this counterfeit document showed how low some people will stoop to demean teachers and teacher organizations. The real news is that Sonoma teachers are joining thousands of their colleagues in fighting for salaries and contracts that reflect their talents and their devotion to the children they educate and inspire every day."
Mike Myslinski
