Dear Members of the Rochester Public Schools Community,
I am writing to provide you with an update on the contract negotiations that our school district’s administration has conducted in collaboration with the Rochester Education Association (REA) since last summer. I hope you will take time to read this message because the issues that we are grappling with through our ongoing negotiations with REA will shape the future of our school district and our community.
Up to this point, I have said very little about our negotiations with REA in public because I would prefer that those negotiations take place at the negotiating table, where honest perspectives can be shared, priorities can be questioned and challenged, and common ground can be found. However, because our administration’s proposal for the 2023-2024 contract with REA has recently become a subject of significant public discussion, it is necessary to update the RPS community on the progress we are making in negotiation with the union that represents the extraordinary teachers and other educators who are the heart of Rochester Public Schools.
The most recent offer that our administration has made would increase the cost of REA’s two-year contract by 15.44%. That is one of the largest increases in the cost of any contract that has been approved or reported during the current round of negotiations between school districts and teachers’ unions across the state. It would also be the largest increase in total compensation that teachers in Rochester have received from RPS in at least three decades.
While I think it is relevant to point out that our administration’s current proposal to REA is significantly larger than agreements that have been reached in other school districts today and agreements that have been reached in Rochester in the past, what really matters are the improvements in total compensation that our proposal would provide for REA members and their families.
As in any labor negotiation, the effect that our proposal would have on the total compensation that our employees receive must be calculated by combining increases in salary and benefits. Because Rochester Public Schools shifted the cost of health care premium increases from all RPS employees to the school district at the start of 2024, employees who opt to receive health care coverage from Rochester Public Schools (which includes 72.3% of REA members), have seen large declines in the cost of their health care since the start of the year. Those declines in health care costs have led to significant increases in take home pay for all employees who receive health care coverage from RPS.
When the increases in salaries and benefits that our proposal would provide for REA members are combined, full time REA employees would see an average increase in total compensation of $6,742 during the first year of the contract. The lowest increase in total compensation that any member of REA would receive during that first year of the contract would be $3,959. Those increases during the first year of the contract would grow by an average of 2.17% in the second year of the contract.
More specifically, here is how our proposal would impact a sampling of teachers at different points in their careers and who have chosen different options for health insurance during the first year of the contract:
A teacher with 12 years of experience in RPS and a Master of Arts degree who does not participate in the RPS health insurance plan would receive a pay increase of $4,944
A teacher with 25 years of experience in RPS in the Educational Specialist lane who does not participate in the RPS health insurance plan would receive a pay increase of $5,256
A teacher with 20 years of experience in RPS and a Bachelor of Arts degree plus 10 credits who participates in the family high deductible with HRA health insurance plan would receive a pay increase of $5,950
A first year teacher with a Bachelor of Arts degree who participates in the single copay health insurance plan would receive a pay increase of $8,310
A teacher with 7 years of experience in RPS and a Master of Arts degree plus 10 credits who participates in the single + child(ren) qualified high deductible with HSA health insurance plan would receive a pay increase of $10,908
A teacher with 2 years of experience in RPS and a Master of Arts degree plus 20 credits who participates in the single + child(ren) health insurance plan would receive a pay increase of $11,996.
As REA members consider those proposed increases, I think it is also important to answer a question that I know is on many of their minds: Is the administration’s proposal really the best offer that could be made given the financial situation of Rochester Public Schools?
In the long-term interest of our students, our staff, and our school district, the answer to that question is yes. I have already proposed and the RPS School Board has agreed to spend $7 million of our budgetary reserve to shift the burden of paying for health care from our employees to the school district. That is an appropriate use of our budget reserve to solve the problem of health care costs for our employees, but it would be reckless to dig even deeper into our fund balance to achieve other objectives.
As RPS navigates the rough financial waters that lie ahead, it is vitally important that all stakeholders in our school district be assured that our administration is not hiding or mismanaging the funds that the public entrusts us to allocate effectively to support the education of our community’s young people. The financial position of Rochester Public Schools is continually monitored not only by the State of Minnesota, but also by the bond rating agencies that determine the rates we pay to borrow money for construction and a wide array of other essential expenses. Last year, RPS received its fourth flawless external audit in a row, confirming that our school district adheres to the highest standards of financial management and public reporting of its resources.
Let me end this long message by looking briefly beyond the financial issues that have led to the current impasse in negotiations with REA. Before our negotiations ran into roadblocks regarding funding, we agreed to a set of important non-financial issues that matter to many REA members. For example, our administration agreed that employees can use up to 3 sick days to observe religious holidays. We also agreed that teachers can choose to use flex time or to be paid when they have served as a substitute teacher. In addition, we agreed to put four curriculum adjustment days when students do not report to school on the calendar to provide teachers and other staff more time for collaboration and planning. Still further, we agreed that REA members can reinstate planned sick days when school closes unexpectedly. And we agreed that general education teachers can bank time they spend in IEP meetings and use that time to reduce the hours they spend at parent-teacher conferences. Special education teachers are already able to utilize that practice, and we also agreed to increase the number of hours that those special education teachers can bank from IEP meetings to reduce the time they are required to spend at conferences.
The RPS School Board and I agree that our teachers deserve more, which is why the contract that we have proposed would provide more. Our offer would provide more than other contracts in the state, and it would provide more than the contracts that Rochester Public Schools has reached with the Rochester Education Association over the past three decades. If approved, our proposal would be a quantum leap over the school district’s current contract with the Rochester Education Association. And while further increasing the cost of that contract is not prudent or possible at this time, I am eager to build upon the progress we have made through the current round of negotiations to go even further in the contracts we would work together to reach in the years ahead.
Sincerely,
Kent Pekel, Ed.D.
Superintendent