School Board and Teachers’ Union Reach Tentative Agreement
The Monroe County School Board (MCSB) and the United Teachers of Monroe (UTM) are pleased to announce a tentative agreement regarding the 2016-2018 Teacher and School Related Personnel (SRP) contracts.
During the final negotiation session on Friday, October 7th, after fifteen previous sessions during the spring and summer months, representatives for the MCSB and the UTM reached mutually agreed upon terms and conditions for teachers and school related personnel for the 2016-2017/2017-2018 school years. Holly Hummell-Gorman, President of the UTM stated, “We are very pleased with the results of our collaborative process. We were able to agree upon well deserved salary increases as well as improved language in both contracts for our hard working teachers and school related personnel.” Superintendent Mark T. Porter, who again led the MCSB negotiations team, shared her perspective, noting, “We continue to make improvements and movement toward a more effective collaborative bargaining process and the timing of this agreement is clear evidence of how far we have come. This much improved process is to the credit of both sides and represents a continued collaborative effort in terms of our labor relations and further implementation of an innovative performance based salary schedule.” School Board Chairman Andy Griffiths, noted, “I am pleased that we have reached an agreement at this time. I am glad that our outstanding teachers and SRP’s are receiving the compensation increases they truly deserve.”
The tentative agreement will now be presented by the UTM to its membership for a ratification vote to take place in the next two weeks. Upon ratification the agreement will come back before the MCSB for final approval at their Workshop/Special Meeting on October 25th. Implementation of the new contract will follow immediately with employees seeing the results in their November 15th payroll checks/notices.