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No agreement in sight on new Harrisburg teacher contract

Negotiations on a new contract between Harrisburg teachers and the school board are at an "impasse" after two sessions with a federal mediator, according to Harrisburg Unit District 3 officials.

The administration says it is putting together the district's "last, best offer," in hopes of avoiding a teacher strike.

The teachers union leadership, however, said Monday that teachers have not discussed striking, and instead are hopeful an agreement can be reached with more negotiation.

"That's not where we are - our team is not talking about (a strike)," said Debbie McGowan, the Harrisburg Education Association president. "We still think we can talk to the board.

"Nobody here wants to take the next step," she added, which would be filing an intent to take a strike vote.

Meanwhile, McGowan said the mediator has set aside a few days at the end of November potentially for bargaining, although nothing formal has been set up.

The issue at hand is money, both sides agree. Superintendent Michael Gauch and school board President Chris Penrod both say they wish the district had more to give its teachers.

"We have a lot of passionate staff members who deserve everything they ask for," Gauch said Monday. "The sad part is we don't have the means financially to give them what they deserve."

Penrod said District 3's financial position is still precarious even though the district recently came off the state's financial watch list, which it had been on since 2005.

"We closed on July with a negative balance," Penrod said. "We don't have a pile of money sitting somewhere. We wish we could give them more money, but we don't have it."

He also worries that state funds for education are not a sure thing.

"Just a few months ago, we didn't know if they (the state) were going to give us any money," he said.

The most recent bargaining session, on Nov. 8, ended abruptly when the administration team decided the parties were actually getting farther apart, not closer, and told the mediator they were at impasse, Gauch said.

The next morning, District 3 posted a statement on its website laying out its side of the argument, including aspects of its financial situation and making public the last offers made by both sides - and what each would cost the school district. To read it, visit www.hbg.saline.k12.il.us and click on "HEA negotiations news release."

McGowan said both parties agreed on Nov. 8 to make public statements, but the teachers expected both statements would be posted together. Instead, District 3 moved forward on its own.

She said the teachers are preparing their own statement, which will in part explain that while the numbers attributed to the HEA on the district website are accurate, they also are preliminary.

"It looks a lot worse than it is, because we didn't have a chance to negotiate," McGowan said.

Both sides have offered one-year contract proposals and also three-year proposals. McGowan said the teachers made a counterproposal to the district's three-year offer, and expected the bargaining would begin. Instead, bargaining stopped.

"We don't want the public to think that was our final offer," she said.

Gauch said he doesn't "shoot low" when bargaining, meaning he doesn't start with an artificially low offer and expect an artificially high one in return.

"I know we're not the highest-paid district in the area, and I know we're not the lowest paid," he said, but added he no longer thinks that should be the benchmark. "I think it's more about what your community can afford."

The last Harrisburg strike was in 1992, before McGowan's time.

The uncertainty of state funding in the past few years has left both sides reluctant to attempt a multi-year deal. The most recent contract, which gave teachers an overall 2 percent pay increase, expired on June 30. Teachers and administrators are working under the terms of the old contract until a new one is ratified.

The Harrisburg Education Association represents 127 teachers, said McGowan, who teaches eighth-grade math. Last year, the union surveyed its teachers, who said their greatest concerns were salary and insurance.

In the current contract, a starting teacher with a bachelor's degree and no experience makes $36,420. At the high end, a teacher with 23 years' experience and a master's degree plus 32 hours will make a base salary of $64,201.

Gauch said the district continues to look for ways to move the talks forward.

"We're continuing to look for ... anything we can do to make the offer more palatable," he said. "But I truly don't know if there is."

However, Gauch also signaled his willingness to go off the grid, suggesting members of his team could meet informally with members of the union side before the next formally-scheduled session. He said in his experience sometimes unscheduled meetings lead to breakthroughs that formal meetings don't.