Contract talks will continue
Tuesday, July 20, 2004 7:20 AM PDT
By Venice Buhain
Printable version
E-mail this articleRAINIER --- Rainier teachers and administration will continue their contract discussions with a mediator next month, after the financial figures from the 2003-04 school year are complete.
Those figures are expected to be in by next Wednesday's board meeting, school officials said.
Both the union and the administration felt they had come closer in their contract after about eight hours of discussion with a state mediator for the first time Monday. The next session is Aug. 3.
Mediation can theoretically go on for as long as both sides feel like there is movement, though Superintendent Michael Carter, representing the administration, and union president Jen Nelson, both said the school year was looming.
Rainier has had drawn-out negotiations in the past --- during the 1998-99 school year, mediation continued through January.
"We're just glad we're still talking," Carter said.
Nelson said the teachers agree and hope not to have to take a strike vote, though the union was not ruling it out, she said.
"As long as both sides are willing to meet, I think we can continue" to negotiate, she said.
Carter said in an interview last week that the district had made the best offer it could with its budget constraints.
Negotiators for the union believe the administration can make a better financial offer without cutting into the district's contingency fund or its capital projects fund, teacher Louise Brown said Monday. The union believes having fewer teachers in the 2004-05 year than in the previous year will enable the district to improve on its offer for family insurance, she said.
"I don't see what they see," Carter said.
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