The Milwaukee Public School District and the district’s teachers union reached a contact deal Friday intended to save up to $50 million in the next two years.
The 5,600 teachers represented by the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association are currently working under a contract that expired in July 2009, despite previous attempts at contract negotiations.
The new contract is aimed at financial stability, MPS Superintendent Gregory E. Thornton said in a statement.
“The agreement is fundamental to our reforms,” Thornton said. “We will be glad to have these terms in place for our teachers, who are so critical in our efforts to increase student achievement.”
MPS is the largest school district in Wisconsin, with 184 schools and approximately 82,000 students.
The new contract applies to the time since the contract expired through July 2013, according to a MPS statement, and calls for a pay freeze for the first year, which includes 2009.
The first pay freeze is followed by a 3 percent increase the next year, and 2.5 percent and 3 percent increases in the next two years.
Additionally, the agreement requires teachers to switch to a lower-cost health care plan, establishing a lower premium and requiring teachers to contribute a percentage of their salary toward coverage for the first time ever.
Mike Langyel, MToEA president, said in a statement the agreement was reached for the good of the district.
“For our students to have access to a well-rounded education in the future, the entire community needs to start working together now to change the state’s broken school funding system,” Langyel said.
The tentative contract agreement comes this summer, when MPS laid off 842 teachers. Eighty-nine teachers were recalled in July, with MPS citing additional funding sources and late resignation of other teachers as the cause for the recall.
The school board and the teachers’ union will continue to negotiate over health care, specifically benefits for retirees, according to the MPS.
The Milwaukee School Board will vote on ratification of the contract agreement Oct. 26.
