Schools
School District 'Interested in Resolving' Three-Year Stalemate with Teachers Union
Novato Federation of Teachers rep says 'Our best and brightest teachers have been voting with their feet and leaving.'
Teachers in Novato continue to work under a contract that expired in 2009, and formal negotiations have yet to resume between the Novato Federation of Teachers and the .
According to NFT President Aaron Fix, the union is hopeful that communication will improve now that the district has a new superintendent, Shalee Cunningham, and new chief financial officer, Karen Maloney. Cunningham and Maloney both took their posts this summer.
Fix said negotiations seemed “bogged down and on the path to impasse” earlier this year, but “with our new superintendent and CFO, there seems to be some hope that we can reach a settlement.”
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“The sticking point has always been salary and benefits for teachers,” Fix said. “It has been three years since teachers have seen even a modest raise, and in the meantime our best and brightest teachers have been voting with their feet and leaving.”
"We feel that it is imperative that teachers are offered a competitive wage in order to attract and retain the top-quality educators that this community rightly demands," he said. "The problem is that you get what you pay for, and currently our district is not offering a top-quality salary."
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Pam Conklin, director of human resources for the Novato Unified School District, said the district hopes to reach a settlement, but that the contract they’re working under is still valid.
"We do have a teacher contract," Conklin said. “It doesn’t expire because all those same provisions are in place. It still applies.”
She said the district is in continuing contact with the union “to resolve the outstanding issues. At this point it is compensation.”
Despite the lack of agreement about teacher pay, the two groups have retained a positive working relationship, she said.
“It’s very amicable,” she said. “It is not contentious. It’s not adversarial. We’re very fortunate we have an amicable relationship with our teacher union. ... I’m certainly optimistic that we will come to resolution soon. The district is very interested in resolving this.”
