Certified employee contract

Sisters School District's Certified employees have ratified a three-year contract with the Sisters School District. The new contract will be in effect from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2010. The district's new superintendent Elaine Drakulich will have two years to build a sound relationship with district teachers before entering into contract negotiations some time in 2009.

According to current superintendent Ted Thonstad, soft negotiations were entered into on two issues with the district's certified leadership earlier this school year.

"We had very informal discussions," he said. Thonstad met with Paul Patton, Sisters Education Association president and a two other certified representatives and later with Uniserve Insurance representative Chet Steiger. The Sisters Education Association is the organization that represents Sisters teachers.

"We had some informal discussions about the fact that we could agree on salary and the insurance cap... issues in the contract, would they agree to roll the contract over. By that we mean that we are not going to talk about any language issues in the contract. ... They said, 'yes', that they'd be interested in doing that," Thonstad said.

According to Thonstad the district did not want to get into a lengthy bargaining process with a new superintendent coming into the district. "That was one of the issues motivating me. I wanted to have a contract in place, if possible, before the new superintendent arrived," he said.

"Bargaining can be contentious at times," Thonstad said. He wanted to insure that Drakulich would be in a position to build relationships.

After several exchanges of proposals and informal discussions, common ground was found.

"We needed to pay competitively with Bend and Redmond," Thonstad said.

Agreement came when the cost of living increase was set at the midway point between Bend and Redmond.

"We ended up with a three percent increase - cost of living increase," he said "The terms of the agreement are 3 percent for 2007-08, 2-3 percent for 2008-09, that's going to be dependent upon CPI and 2009-10 is the same."

In general, the district's starting salary is lower than that of Bend and Redmond, but Sisters teachers with experience are paid more here than in Bend or Redmond.

"We have lost a few teachers to Bend and Redmond, but it was not because of salary. There is just not that much difference," Thonstad said.

At the same time agreement was formulated on salary, the district proposed a seven percent cap on insurance premiums per year.

"The insurance cap is the amount of money we pay towards the cost of the medical insurance. ... We are paying this year $842 monthly for full-time employees towards the cost of their insurance. Final agreement came in with a nine percent cap on 2007-08 and six percent caps for both 2008-09 and 2009-10.