Bargaining Bulletin
October 31, 2023
District and BEA teams make progress in all-day session
The District and BEA bargaining teams had a productive, full day of bargaining on Monday, October 30. This was the seventh bargaining session since negotiations opened last May and was the first full day of bargaining, starting at 8 a.m. and ending close to 4:30 p.m.
BEA President Sarah Barclay said Monday's session "was encouraging and we hope the momentum created can be carried into future sessions."
Following opening statements (below), the District presented a package proposal that included counter-proposals to 12 articles in the contract. These include revisions in the District's offers on compensation, benefits and the length of the work year. (For details, see the section titled "District's package proposal made at Oct. 30 bargaining session" near the end of this update.)
Most of Monday's session was devoted to three articles in the contract: Article 2 (Association Rights), Article 4 (Grievance Procedures), and Article 5 (Complaint Procedures). Key discussion points for Article 2 included BEA meetings in district facilities; use of district email for BEA matters; paid leave time for BEA representatives to perform union duties during work hours; BEA officer and release time; and access to a digital staff director through Human Resources.
Three more full-day bargaining sessions scheduled
Negotiations will continue next Monday, November 6, beginning at 8 a.m. The session is schedule to go another 8 hours, ending at 4 p.m. Additional full-day sessions are scheduled for Nov. 13, Nov. 28 and Dec. 4. All sessions are open to the public and are in the Board Room at the Education Center.
Opening statements at Monday's bargaining session
We aspire to be an employer of choice
We truly desire to find a path forward collaboratively. We care about all of our staff, and we mean it when we say we want to be an employer of choice. One of our district goals stresses the importance of a sense of safety, welcoming, and belonging in our school communities. This applies to students, staff, and families. We aspire to create conditions in our schools where all feel welcomed and included. And we need to be financially secure.
The rest of Dr. Cook's statement, with slides from his presentation, follows.
Clarity around District's position in bargaining
Dr. Cook walks through District's budget, explains how the state school funding increase still falls well short of needs
At the end of the 2023 legislative session, our legislators approved an increase in funding of the state school fund formula by over $900 million, for a total of $10.2 billion for all public schools in Oregon. District leaders around the state shared with them that an even higher amount – $10.3 billion – was necessary just to maintain the current level of service. And even this amount falls significantly short of the Quality Education Model (QEM) report commissioned by ODE of the Quality Education Council recommending $11.9 billion in the 2023-25 biennium to adequately fund public schools in Oregon.
The Legislature was reluctant to go to just $10.2 billion, and it took a tremendous effort to get to this amount. During the entire legislative session, the superintendents, including myself, were imploring the legislators to increase this amount, that it was not enough.
How the district is funded from the state
We are funded on a weighted model of enrollment, known as Average Daily Membership weighted (ADMw). The ADMw includes the total enrollment in our district, along with additional weighting for things like students on an IEP, students living in poverty, and language learners. This can increase the ADMw if a district has a higher prevalence of students from poverty, students with special needs, or a high proportion of students whose primary language is not English.
Per-pupil funding for Bend-La Pine Schools is the lowest in this region
This formula revenue accounts for about 97% of our general fund operating revenue each year. And with the shifting demographics in Central Oregon, we now have the lowest weighted student average – and therefore lowest per pupil funding – in the region.
New money in general fund is $8.7 million for current year
When we take the general-purpose formula revenue in the latest estimate of the 2022-23 school year and compare it to the general-purpose formula revenue in the estimate of the current school year, you will see a difference of just over $9 million. Subtract from that our required adjustments for our retirement system bonds, and we are left with $8.7 million. This is an increase of around 5% in overall funding from last year to this year. This is the new money we have in our general fund budget to work with.
These new dollars will be funded year to year going forward, assuming the state does not enact funding cuts, or our enrollment doesn’t decline further. Again, $8.7 million is the amount of new money Bend-La Pine Schools has to balance our budget for this school year (2023-24). With the additional $8.7 million this year, our general fund budget will total about $223 million.
Limits on what we can spend
Five funding parameters for our budget and applicable to this bargaining
The District faces some fundamental parameters as we set our current budget and entered bargaining season.
RESERVE FUND OF 5%
Each year we build a budget that includes a reserve fund of 5% – nothing more, nothing less. The reserve fund is necessary because it protects the school district in the event of unforeseen or unavoidable costs. If the prior year ends with a higher fund balance, we are required to build a budget that finishes with a fund balance of 5% the following year. This budget is built to account for every dollar that enters the district and where it is spent. Every dollar. To give some perspective, this level of fund balance would barely cover one month’s worth of operational costs for our district.
ANNUAL AUDIT
We are audited annually to ensure that our accounting practices and fiduciary responsibility to be good stewards of public dollars are made publicly accountable. Our approved budgets and our corresponding audits for the past 10+ years are available for all to see on our website. The point here is to clarify that there is no secret bucket of money.
ONE-TIME COST SAVINGS
While presenting the proposed budget to the board last spring, we explained that we are carrying over an excess in the fund balance into the current fiscal year. This amount is about $5 million. These dollars are one-time cost savings due to pandemic-related cost reductions. Think of these funds like a month of lowered bills, so there’s a little extra money at the end of the month. Please remember this $5 million when we are talking about the district’s offer.
STAFF REDUCTIONS NECESSARY
This is our final year for using ESSER relief dollars. These one-time dollars served to buffer our budgets and increased costs of operation through the pandemic, and they expire in September 2024. It’s important to note that most of the ESSER funding has been devoted to certified staff positions, and that funding will no longer be available after this school year. We will use one-time dollars to close the gaps between revenues and costs. But as you know, funding ongoing costs with one-time dollars is unsustainable. As a result, we will need to reduce staff positions for the 2024-25 school year. This is true regardless of the outcome of any new employee agreements.
ENROLLMENT IS DOWN
Student enrollment in our district has decreased since the 2019-2020 school year. We are down about 1,500 students since this high point in our total enrollment. While we have adjusted positions downward to account for lower enrollment, we have also used our one-time ESSER funds to cushion this decrease in staffing.
Majority of operating budget goes toward salaries and benefits
As many of you have heard me say, about 85% of our budget is spent on people – our teachers and other certified staff, our classified staff, and administrative employees. The remaining 15% goes toward fairly static operational costs like utilities, transportation, technology, property and liability insurance, and debt services. By far most of our budget is spent on people.
Our take on the BEA's proposal
Adding it up, it far exceeds what we have to spend
The BEA’s bargaining team proposal included reopening 19 of 20 current articles in the collective bargaining agreement, and adding 5 more articles. Included in this proposal were over 100 pages of revision and at least 40 proposed changes that would require additional financial resources. Our original estimate put this at around $70 million in new spending – a sum association leadership contests. We have asked the BEA leadership to cost out their proposal and give us an alternative estimate, since they dispute our estimates. To date we have not received any cost estimates.
Assuming it totals $70 million in new spending, this would be a 31% increase in costs on a $220 million budget that is experiencing less than 5% increase in funding from the state. (Remember the $8.7 million in new state funding mentioned above?)
Instead of going through every one of the 40-plus items in the BEA proposal that come with increased costs, let's look at just four items that paint the very real costs involved for the first year of a new contract:
So just for these four items, that’s an increase of $35.4 million. That’s spending our additional state funds four times over, plus some! This amount, less the $8.7 million in new funding from the state, equates to approximately 240 teaching positions.
The path forward
Let’s get back to trusting one another
This year’s bargaining experience has been disappointing, and I think that’s probably true for everyone around this table and for those who are watching us. From the beginning these negotiations were portrayed as contentious and antagonistic, especially in characterizations repeatedly shared outside these walls. This is not a fight and should not be regarded as one. We have a common and worthy goal in making Bend-La Pine Schools a destination school district for educators and a leading employer in Central Oregon. Who here would not want that for our community?
Prior to today’s session, we’ve had 6 mutually agreed upon bargaining sessions: two in May, two in June, one in September, and one earlier this month. The District was prepared to continue bargaining from mid-June to mid-September. The BEA chose not to schedule bargaining sessions with us during that time.
For each of our 6 previous meetings, the district team has bargained in good faith, with the intention of addressing the significant scope of the BEA proposal going through each of the 24 Articles and 119 pages that were brought to the table by BEA leadership. This process takes time and deliberation, especially as we consider over 40 specific items that would require additional resources to enact. This work may look slow to some, but in fact it’s protracted due to the volume of items we are obligated to take up.
Fully prepared to bargain and work toward agreement
Contrary to some public portrayals, the district bargaining team spends many hours preparing for each of these sessions. As a whole group, in pairs to address specific articles, and individually as we conduct close reads. We read, consider and deliberate over every BEA proposal. We enter these discussions fully prepared to bargain and work toward agreement. We are eager to finish this work on behalf of our certified staff, all employees, and our students and families. We hope that happens soon.
If the BEA bargaining team has concerns about the pace of these negotiations, let’s resolve that here, face to face, today. Let’s talk about it! That’s how we will move this forward. Postcards and social media jabs are not going to help us overcome our differences.
There’s a standard for decorum and propriety in how we do this, which can be found in the language the BEA has proposed in the new Article 25. It reads:
Criticism of an employee shall be made in confidence, and all reasonable effort shall be made to avoid criticism in the presence of students, community members, and other represented employees, and at public events.
We need to see actions on both sides that demonstrate a commitment to build trust. Trust in the district administration, and trust in the BEA. Over the past 6 months, that mutual trust has been eroded. This worries me and should concern everyone. It’s not too late to come back together and complete these negotiations with a few full, productive days.
We stand before you today and every day of this process fully prepared to engage in the work, in this room, having fully read and digested each and every proposal on every article that the BEA bargaining team has noticed.
How Bend-La Pine Schools prioritizes classroom spending
I’m sure that many of you are aware that Portland Public Schools administration and the Portland Association of Teachers are gridlocked in their own bargaining process after mediation. In fact, association members have voted to strike starting Nov. 1. One of the association’s biggest sources of frustration with the Portland district is the proportion of spending that goes directly into the classroom. Their unit is frustrated that Portland Public Schools’ direct classroom spending isn’t in line with other large districts in the state, as illustrated in this example shared by Oregon Public Broadcasting:
The union’s overarching criticism remains — PPS spends about 48% of district funds on direct classroom support, compared to Beaverton’s 56%, Hillsboro’s 55% and Bend-La Pine and Salem-Keizer’s 53%, respectively. (OPB, Oct. 9, 2023)
Bend-La Pine Schools is a leader in the state among large districts in how we prioritize classroom spending. We do so by ensuring we are not top heavy, staying within or below the averages found in the ten large districts and Redmond.
A bit more about our costs and staff commitments
There are increased costs that the district must absorb each year. This year, two large ones need mention:
1. The costs for providing pay increases from the step and lane advancements on each employee group's salary matrix is about $2 million this year.
2. The PERS cost increase due to a rate increase for the district this year is around $1.5 million.
As we bargain with both our certified and classified associations, we know the following:
1. The cost of every 1% increase in pay across the district this year is $1.36 million.
2. The cost of every $10 increase in the insurance cap across the district is $200,000.
3. Each additional day per diem is $520,000.
District's package proposal made at Oct. 30 bargaining session
Increase in proposed compensation and benefits
The district has made significant shifts in its overall proposal. However, the new dollars committed in this proposal come almost solely in the form of compensation and benefits. Key components of the proposal include:
- Elimination of the first step on the certified salary schedule, thereby increasing the pay of new teachers.
- A pay increase of 5.3% in year 1 of the contract (2023-24, retroactive to the start of the contract) and 4% in year 2, for a total of 9.3% over two years. (This is an increase from the District's Sept. 18 proposal of 4.5% in year 1 and 3.5% in year 2.)
- An increase in the district contribution of insurance costs of $50/month in year 1 and $40/month in year 2, or $90 monthly in increases over the life of the contract.
- Reduction in contracted days from our last proposal from 192 to 190.
If the BEA bargaining team wishes to incorporate language in other articles that would require additional funding resources to implement, the District would need to reduce the financial offer on compensation and benefits by a commensurate amount.
Overall pay raises for the current school year would be nearly 10 percent
This District offer outlined Monday ensures that Bend-La Pine Schools remains the highest paying district in the region.
With this offer:
- Our first-year teachers -- the most financially vulnerable teachers in the district -- would see their pay increase by 9.6% this school year, with the proposed pay increase and elimination of the first step on the salary schedule.
- The majority of our teachers, who would be receiving a step increase plus the base pay increase, would see an average of 9.9% increase in their pay this year.
- Teachers who are receiving this increase in base pay plus their step, plus a shift over in a column, would receive upwards of a 12% increase in their pay this year.
- And those at the top of our pay scale will receive a 5.3% increase.
Additionally, the cost of implementing this raise across the district, when combined with the aforementioned increased costs in the district, comes to a total of $11.8 million for year 1 of the biennium, well above the $8.7 million ongoing increase in state school funding shared earlier in the presentation.
To be clear, these are the actual costs of providing a similar raise to all employees across the district, rather than just the BEA membership. The one-time funds from our fund balance would be used to close the gap in year 1 between our new ongoing dollars and the total costs of increased compensation and benefits.
In conclusion
Dr. Cook: A fair proposal that we can afford
You will see from our offer that we desire to continue the dialogue around creative, collaborative ways to solve the complex problems in our schools that the Association’s language in their proposal for Articles 16 (Teaching Hours) and Articles 18 (Special Instruction & Classroom Management) attempt to address.
First of all, we are asking for you all to spend some substantial time in these sessions with us discussing Article 16. While the district understands the ongoing need for staff preparation time, we also understand that schools need time for collective work on school improvement priorities and our students need instructional time. And any changes to the current Article 16 with financial implications would need to be considered in the context of an overall financial package.
Additionally, we too believe that the learning environment is such an important issue that we are recommending that Article 18 become a primary focus of the Task Force on School Climate and Culture for the near future, rather than trying to resolve the issues at the bargaining table.
We believe that there are solutions in our future, that with additional resources we could make a significant impact in these areas. But not without additional funding.
We recognize that we live in an expensive, desirable place to live. Living in the city of Bend costs 16% more than the state average and 31% more than the national average. This is a real and substantial issue for our entire community. We cannot effectively attack this problem with only the new ongoing dollars provided by the state alone. With that, I’d like to give you three examples to consider.
First, we are already pushing decision-makers to consider a new weighting factor, one that accounts for the higher cost of doing business in communities such as ours. Burns receives the same dollars per student that we do, despite a median house price less than half of ours. This makes their cost of providing public education lower than in our community. We are arguing that this equal treatment of unequal circumstances is an equity issue and that a double weighting mechanism must be used, first to accommodate for differences in wealth (our current equalization formula rooted in equity), but weighted again to account for the cost of doing business. A funding model adjustment could potentially alleviate some of the impact of this disparity.
Second, we must continue to advocate for more resources from the state. Oregon gets fantastic results as a state for the amount of dollars it invests in education. We are 22nd in the nation for per-pupil spending, 13th for teacher salaries, and 23rd for classified salaries, according to the National Education Association. But we are still sorely underfunded.
Remember when I mentioned that superintendents were demanding more funding from our legislators? We were stuck at $9.9 billion last spring for quite some time. At the time, bargaining was underway and the district’s opening offer was on the table at 2%, plus steps and lanes. The number of people who expressed outrage directly at me for the pitiful offer of 2% was palpable. Here is an important point to note: That offer from the district included every dollar of new funding we would have received from the state if we were fully funded at $9.9 billion. Likewise, our current offer would be spending more dollars on staff compensation and benefits than we are getting from the state increase in funding.
If even half of the folks who have shown up to these bargaining sessions would join with me when advocating with legislators for additional funding, we could be a powerful force.
Last, as many of you have heard me say, we are one of the few large districts in the state without a local levy. In fact, we are one of only two large districts in the state with a higher than average cost of living without a levy. We are investigating whether to ask voters if they support a local levy. Join with me, join us in that conversation, sharing our stories with our community so if and when we do ask them for additional funding, they know why we need it.
Building trust continues to be a conversation I hear throughout our district. It is a focus of our leadership team, and we are actively training on it across the district. Let’s commit to building trust in this process by open and transparent communication built on mutual respect and the sharing of real information with accurate statements of fact, that happens here in the bargaining room, and in the public.
We have spent significant time over the past 9 months in the climate and culture task force problem addressing some of our most urgent challenges. We have had a good start with some impact across the district implementing the work of the task force. Getting to consensus with this group on priorities hasn’t been an easy task. But through a shared set of values and respect, we are getting there.
I invite you all to join me and our team in rolling up our sleeves through these next full days of bargaining to get to a fair proposal that we can afford and that can be administered in the years to come. Let’s show our community that we can build trust, find common ground, mutual respect, and agreement.