When Lisa Bauman heard Wednesday night that Cotati-Rohnert Park school officials wanted to meet with her and other officers from the Rohnert Park Cotati Educators’ Association, she was skeptical.
After the fifth day of a teachers’ strike that began on March 10, Bauman, the union group’s first vice president, felt more disillusioned than ever with stalled negotiations over teachers’ pay rises.
Relations between the two sides had deteriorated, she said, and two negotiation sessions with a mediator had failed to bring the parties to an agreement.
She saw little room for any breakthrough.
“I was really discouraged,” said Bauman, a biology teacher at Rancho Cotate High School.
Still, along with Emilie King, the union’s second vice president, and Denise Tranfaglia, the union’s president, she agreed to a meeting Thursday at 2:30 p.m. at the district offices on Burton Avenue.
Across the table in a conference room sat Superintendent Mayra Perez, who had requested the meeting, and Jen Hansen, the district’s director of human resources. School board members Leffler Brown and Michelle Wing were also in attendance.
What followed, according to interviews with Bauman, Tranfaglia and Perez, was an informal but frank discussion of both the plight of the union’s 320 members and the financial constraints district officials faced in trying to meet the demands. teachers for higher salaries.
At the end of the discussion, approximately 45 minutes later, the parties were ready to resume negotiations. And after a three-hour session, they reached a tentative deal.
It was a long time coming.
According to officials on both sides, it stemmed from a meeting like no other over the course of eight months of negotiations, half the time at an impasse: Neither the school district attorney nor the California site representative Teachers Association were present.
The change in approach to that discussion paved the way for the parties to find common ground and end the strike, according to union representatives and Perez, the district’s top administrator.
“It was us, with no one else,” Perez said. “We had a positive conversation and we were able to resolve it collaboratively.”
“The board (members) sat down with all the stakeholders and ultimately had the conversation was monumental,” Bauman said. “And that was the key to solving this problem.”
Teacher requests, administrator concerns
The two sides were separated for weeks by a 3% margin – the difference between the ongoing 6% salary increase teachers wanted and the 3% the district said it could afford in a raise first year.
The tentative agreement largely gave teachers what they wanted. The district agreed to provide a 6% increase in the first year. To reduce some costs, however, the district has spread the total over the current school year.
The total salary package gives teachers a 14.6% raise over three years. It will cost the school district an additional $7.9 million on teacher payrolls, according to John Bartolome, the district’s chief business officer.
The district’s current budget is $59 million, and the largest expense is teacher compensation and benefits.
District officials had balked at teachers’ demands throughout negotiations, saying it could not afford to give the same raises to its other union employees and administrators.
If the pay increases offered to teachers in the tentative agreement were extended to the other two unions and district administrators, it would cost about $12.6 million, Bartolome said.
District officials had previously said they would be forced to move into staff reductions immediately to avoid a budget shortfall. They did not say on Friday how they would ease the financial strain of the teachers’ deal.
Perez signaled that the district will approach its budget with renewed creativity, scrutinizing its inflows and outflows to maintain the district’s fiscal integrity while continuing to pay teachers agreed-upon increases.
“Now we can look at the budget and see where we need to consolidate, tighten up,” she said.
Strike a financial blow for staff
On Friday, the district’s 13 campuses were alive with scenes of joy and celebration, a stark contrast to the days of picket lines and protest signs.
Teachers celebrated the promise of consistent and continued salary increases and greeted their students with hugs.
“Like Christmas morning when I was little,” said Rancho Cotate biology teacher Chris Steffens, describing seeing his students walk through the door to his classroom.
The district, the county’s third-largest with about 6,000 students, begins its week-long spring break on Monday. After that, school will resume as normal, with the pay dispute settled after a ratification vote by union members meant to seal the deal.
