Teachers inside the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools District have worked over three-quarters of the school year without a set contract.
Earlier this week, details about the newest proposal for a contract between KCK Public Schools and NEA-KCK were released.
Those details could be found here.
Also included in the email that featured those details were a set of talking points on how teachers could be lobbied to approve of the deal.
Below are some of the talking points teachers can expect to hear as voting begins for the new proposal soon. Again, these are word-for-word from the NEA-KCK.
- We split available money between a one time stipend and an increase on the salary schedule. The concern of the District is being able to maintain the salary increase next year if the state passes the Income Tax Elimination bill which would devastate school funding. We will be bargaining for a raise for the 2012-13 school year when we start that cycle of negotiations.
- The stipend and retroactive pay will be paid ASAP post-ratification.
- Returning teachers can expect- a one time payment of approximately $916 which includes retro-pay for the increase to their step on the salary schedule and the one time stipend. They can also expect each remaining paycheck to have a total increase (pre-tax) of approximately $21. Some teachers may want to alter their W4 for the pay period in which the lump sum payment is disbursed.
- Disability Buy-Back Program- Quite a few parameters that would have excluded the majority of the bargaining unit would have been imposed had we gone forward with it. Once in the contract it is hard to get them out. A very long discussion and debate would have been required to come to agreement so we believe that in order to finish last night and get more money to people ASAP it was wiser to just pull it off the table for this year.
- It is imperative that we ensure that members and nonmembers know that it is because of NEA-KCK and the dues that we pay to support the Bargaining Team that we have additional compensation. It was not there before. We did the legwork to identify it and get it into the salary schedule so that it is continued next year. The raise more than covers dues for non-members and the annual increase. Explain the agreement and RECRUIT!
- You may want to let people know that it is more than any of the big KC schools bargained and that half of it is in the schedule, which none of the other schools managed to bargain.
