Teachers Contract up for RTM Vote Monday [UPDATE]

Update, 11:01 a.m.: In an email to Darien Patch on Monday morning, Schools Superintendent Stephen Falcone wrote about the proposed teacher's contract:

"Wages would have gone up by 3 percent per year if we had not made changes to the steps in the contract. Therefore, at a baseline, it would have gone up 9 percent without a general wage increase but just through step costs. Our total increase is 6.63 percent over the three years."

Original article:

Darien's teachers would get much slower wage increases over the next three years, and they'd be switching to a different kind of health insurance plan under the contract up for a vote Monday night by the .

In a recent interview, Schools Superintendent Stephen Falcone described the changes in the proposed contract, which will be put into place on July 1 if the RTM approves it at tonight's meeting.

"There's general support," for the new contract among town officials, Falcone said, largely because the additional cost to the town is kept in check by lower wage increases than the previous three-year contract.

The following description of the contract with the Darien Education Association is based on the interview with Falcone:

On average—and there are many complications for individual teachers—wages would go up by 3 percent half-way through the first year of the contract. Since the wage increase takes place half-way through the year, and because of complicated changes in the "step" system of annual raises, the cost to the town in that first year is actually 1.25 percent, Falcone said.

In the second year wage increases would also take place half-way into the school year, and then in the third year, the wage increase takes place at the normal time—the start of the year. Wages would go up by 2.02 percent in the second year and 3.36 percent in the third year. By the end of the contract, wage rates will have gone up between 8 and 9 percent.

By comparison, in the current three-year contract, which ends on June 30, wages went up 3.9 percent in the first year, 4.2 percent in the second, and another 4.2 percent in the third year.

Here's the complicated part

The 49-page teacher's contract (attached to this article) has complicated tables that specify how much of a wage increase teachers would get, based on each individual employee's place on a scale of wage "steps." (An example of one of the tables, taken from the proposed contract, also is attached to this article.)

Teachers with master's degrees get more money than those who only have bachelor's degrees, and those with doctorates get stil more money. Those who take a certain number of college courses in addition to the ones already used towards their current degree also get slightly higher wages.

The new contract adds three additional intermediate steps within the system, increasing the number of steps to 18 from the current 15. Those new steps serve to lower wage increases, Falcone said, rather than increase them, because teachers about to rise to some of the next steps will instead rise only to the intermediate steps, which provide for lower wage increases.

"People don't get as big an increase [in wages] as they may have expected" under the old contract, he said.

As in previous years, teachers also can make more money within the schools by becoming advisers to student clubs or by becoming heads of their school departments. Reimbursement for that work is somewhat higher under the new contract.

Health insurance

Another important aspect of the new contract is a big change in the way teachers will get their health insurance: Teachers will move from a traditional Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plan to health insurance with health savings accounts.

A PPO is a traditional health insurance plan, where the insurance provider pays out money above a certain deductable for each treatment. Under the new health savings accounts, teachers will put money into an account and the account will pay for various procedures up to a certain amount that is much higher than the old deductable.

At least three important aspects of the new health insurance regime will not essentially change: Coverage of health conditions will remain the same, and the same health insurance company will administer the insurance, and the same doctors will be in the plan.

Teachers will pay a bit less for the health insurance coverage, with the town picking up 2 percent more of the coverage cost, Falcone said. In addition, the town will pick up half of the initial cost of the health savings accounts.

Teachers who hardly ever use health care will find they spend less on it, Falcone said, while teachers who use more of it will see their health costs rise as they have to replenish the health insurance account to make up for the money taken out of it.

A total of 369 teachers will have health savings accounts, Falcone said. Currently, the health savings accounts are available to teachers and some are already using them on a voluntary basis.

Under the new contract, just about every teacher will be using them. About half a dozen teachers are not eligible for the accounts because of federal rules—the reasons vary somewhat, but, for instance, if a teacher receives Medicare, that teacher is ineligible, he said.

Falcone said the health insurance changes, even with the town picking up half of the initial cost of the health savings accounts, should be $283,000 in the first year.

Binding arbitration if the RTM votes down the contract

The Representative Town Meeting has the choice of accepting or rejecting the contract as a whole—it can't make any changes to it or accept only part of it. If the RTM accepts the contract, which has already been approved by the union and passed and other town boards, the agreement is finalized and goes into effect on July 1.

If the RTM rejects the contract, it goes into binding arbitration, with the state setting up a three-arbitrator panel. The town and the union would each submit their "last, best offer" to the arbitrators, who would then look over each "issue" or part of the contract, and pick the town's or the union's offer on that "issue."