Rockford teachers union, district head back to the bargaining table as strike vote looms
By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Rockford Public Schools teachers and district officials will head back to the bargaining table Wednesday for their first session since releasing their contract offers to the public.
Those offers, released after nearly 10 months of negotiations, show the district and union are gridlocked over salaries, retroactive pay, retirement insurance, paraprofessional support, clocking in, and other issues that will affect educators’ total compensation and workload.
“We expect them to come to the table with something we can work with tomorrow,” said Claudia Marshall, president of the Rockford Education Association. “We’ve made drastic changes the last two times we’ve met with them. The ball is in their court for them to volley back or to not.”
The teachers union has scheduled a meeting for Jan. 24, when it expects it will either present members with a new tentative agreement or move forward with a strike vote. “We are meeting regardless. What will happen that day we have yet to determine,” Marshall said.
The district and union leaders previously had a tentative contract at the bargaining table this fall, but it was ultimately rejected by 63% of REA members who voted. Superintendent Ehren Jarrett said the goal is to give teachers the best possible offer that the district can afford.
“We have to find a way to get the best possible contract to the REA teachers that puts us in the best position to attract and retain teachers while being able to afford it,” Jarrett said. “If you can’t afford it two things happen: One is you eventually have to cut back on services to students. Or two, you create deficit spending and a tax burden that is unsustainable.”
Read the final offers
The final offers from the district and the teachers union are posted on the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board website.
The district says its offer will cost an additional $51.6 million over the three-year life of the contract. About $47.9 million of that is from salary increases. The union’s offer anticipates that salaries will cost $17.4 million more than the district’s offer over the three-year life of the contract.
“From the district’s perspective we have real risk with what’s happening with state aid, federal aid and our local tax base for what we can afford to spend on this contract,” Jarrett said. “We feel like $48 million is really at the high end of what we can do.”
Jarrett said there can be serious consequences if the district enters a contract that it can no longer afford in three years.
“What we want to do is maximize the investment we can make in our teachers while minimizing the risk,” he said. “You can never say with complete certainty that you won’t have to make some cuts down the road to services, but we want to minimize the risk of having to cut back on student services.”
Union leaders say that the district could afford to pay teachers a fair wage with better financial management. They point to a growing number of high-paying administrator positions and the recent hiring of incoming superintendent Larry Huff at a salary of $285,000 as examples of the district prioritizing administrator pay over teachers.
“They are not being financially responsible stewards in any way, shape or form. They just hired on a superintendent making way more than the prior and making more than he did in his prior district for only 18 months of experience,” Marshall said. “We have teachers that have given their life, decades to this district, and they deserve to be valued in salary. …
“Their financial irresponsibility for the last decade should not fall on the teachers again for this contract, as it always does.”
Salary increases
The district is offering a 4% base salary increase in the first year of the contract, while the teachers union has called for a 5.5% raise. Those base salary increases are in conjunction with extra pay teachers can earn for their years of experience, often referred to as “steps,” and their continuing education, called “lanes.”
When factoring in those step and lane increases, a teacher could earn a raise of up to 15.65% a year, the district said.
The district’s offer shows a first year teacher with a bachelor’s degree will get $49,877 when factoring in the district’s 9% contribution toward teachers’ retirement. (It’s $45,388 without the retirement contribution factored in.) At the highest end of the pay scale, a teacher with more than 40 credit hours of continuing education and 20-plus years of experience could earn $109,949 when including retirement contributions.
District offer
- Year 1: 4% base salary increase
- Year 2: 3.5% base salary increase
- Year 3: 3% base salary increase
Teacher offer
- Year 1: 5.5% base salary increase
- Year 2: 5.5% base salary increase
- Year 3: 5.5% base salary increase
The average Rockford Public Schools teacher salary last year was $71,486, according to the Illinois State Report Card. The district points out that one-third of its roughly 1,635 teachers earned more than $100,000 during the last school year. About 30% earned between $50,000 and $74,000, and 42% earned between $75,000 and $99,000, according to the district’s calculation. The remaining, about 190 part-time and full-time teachers, earned less than $50,000.
The union says the salary and the climate in Rockford is exacerbating a teacher shortage. They say Rockford competes for teacher talent with districts such as Elgin, Hononegah and Harlem where starting pay is higher. There are 73 open teacher positions right now, Marshall said.
“Why? Because we can’t get teachers to come to this district and when we do we can’t keep them,” Marshall said. “Because we don’t value them enough to pay for the quality that students deserve.”
State report card data shows Rockford Public Schools has an 87.5% teacher retention rate, which is the three-year average percentage of teachers returning to work at the same district. The state average is 89.5%.
What happens in the event of a strike?
Jarrett said that if teachers strike the district will try to provide a space for students to go until the strike is resolved.
“We will not continue to run school in terms of traditional school days. We can’t do that without teachers,” he said. “What we will do is make sure we have safe places for students to go so that families don’t have to take time off work. …
“We will commit to our families to have spaces in our community, in our district, that are open and available to ensure that our most vulnerable students and families don’t have risk of losing their job or trying to scramble to find some kind of child care solution.”
He said he hopes the bargaining process Wednesday will be a fruitful step toward avoiding a strike.
“Everything we’re doing is designed to minimize the chance that will happen,” Jarrett said. “We believe that the work has to happen at the bargaining table. So we’re committed to that bargaining process and continuing to work through it together with our partners.”
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas
