ALBANY, Ore. — Greater Albany School District officials said they made progress during negotiations with the teachers' union on Thursday but still did not reach a full contract agreement, meaning the strike — currently on its eighth day — will continue, and schools will remain closed Friday.
Hundreds of educators with the Greater Albany Education Association went on the district's first-ever strike last week after a mediation session between the district and union failed to reach an agreement. Since then, progress has been made.
Around 1 a.m. on Friday, the union said it reached a tentative agreement with the district on two key items — prep time and professional development.
"By having these two articles agreed upon, we only have class size and our economic package to settle," the union said in a statement.
The news of this progress comes of the back of two other agreements made. Addressing the community over a livestream Thursday, Superintendent Andy Gardner said the bargaining teams reached an agreement Wednesday night on health and safety policy, which added language to the contract about the heat index and union member representation on safety committees.
The union has also moved on some other topics, he added, and said that "neither party is interested in putting the district into financial straits," citing recent cases in neighboring school districts where new contract agreements have been followed by steep cuts. But there are still ongoing points of contention, he said, including disputes about how much certain things cost.
In a news release on Wednesday, the union said the health and safety agreement had been a breakthrough in a week of otherwise "exasperatingly unproductive" sessions.
The news release also promoted a community petition calling on the district school board to resign, a tactic which Gardner criticized on Thursday, arguing that the board members are elected community volunteers who recognize the need for teacher pay increases.
The union did announce Thursday that a teacher has filed formal charges accusing the district of trying to pressure parents into agreeing to reductions in support for their students' Individual Education Plans and holding what they characterized as "illegal secret meetings" to discuss the changes without teachers present.
Gardner said the district was aware of the IEP complaint and would respond once it has investigated and heard back from the Oregon Department of Education.
Prior to the news of prep time and professional development agreements being tentatively reached, Gardner acknowledged that professional development had been "overloaded on staff" in the past, and said the district was willing to make changes, but needed to still be able to train staff.
Compensation is another outstanding issue, he said, specifically stipends for specialists, which the district would rather give as part of regular pay. The district is also sticking with a proposal for a 7% baseline increase for regular compensation and 9% at the top of the scale, he said, because teachers at the top have been receiving comparatively low pay.
"The teachers of this district fell behind inflation by about 9% over the last three years of their contract," Gardner said. "We fully support that they would be caught up, and particularly those at the top of the step, we know that they have not had compensation increases, and they actually sit on a scale that is competitively low for their level of experience."
The district will have an announcement later about what the schedule next week will look like if the parties fail to reach an agreement, Gardner said. The regular schedule calls for two days of conferences on Monday and Tuesday, which are teacher work days but not student school days.