Friday morning at 7:00 representatives from Nampa’s teachers’ union and the school district will sit down to negotiate next year’s labor agreement. These negotiations may be the last chance the district has to overcome a budget crisis that has dogged it all year.
On the table are salaries and benefits. Those two items make up more than 80 percent of the district’s budget. After cutting more than 40 teaching and administrative positions for next year district number crunchers say to reach a balanced budget they still have to cut $3.467 million. Nampa Education Association president Mandy Simpson says teachers know they’ll be taking a hit in next year’s contract.
“It’s going to hurt people, it’s going to hurt their families,” Simpson says. “So it’s about finding that middle ground.”
Contract negotiations might not be as big a part of Nampa’s budget solution if not for a law passed earlier this year by the Idaho legislature. Karen Echeverria, the executive director of Idaho School Boards Association pushed it in the legislature. Simply put, she says, lawmakers gave school boards the ability to cut teacher pay.
“Under the old law you couldn’t do that, they had to have their increase and their movements on the grid,” Echeverria says. “So they will have the ability to go in and negotiate a reduction in salaries for teachers.”
Teachers’ unions opposed the law. For Nampa it likely means the contract negotiation will end with furlough days for teachers and/or a shorter school year for 2013/2014. Possible, but less likely, is a base reduction in salaries. Hypothetically Nampa could cut its $3.467 million by taking about $4,000 from every teacher. That’s about 10 percent of the average Nampa teacher salary. Teachers would have to agree to that. Not surprisingly union president Mandy Simpson doesn’t like the idea. But she says furloughs are on the table, it’s just a question of how many.
“It’s really tough to retain good quality teachers when all the other districts around us are buying back furlough days and moving on the salary schedule and we’re going the other direction,” Simpson says.
Because of the accounting errors that caused Nampa’s budget crisis the district spent more than it had. So while some districts made big cuts, Nampa did not. Now Nampa has to do all at once what other districts did over a few years. And they have just weeks to do it. State law requires districts to submit budgets in July.
Copyright 2013 Boise State Public Radio
