RAINIER — The Rainier School District has just six days to decide whether to accept a salary and benefits package the teachers union presented during contract negotiations Wednesday night.

District negotiators already know what their answer is going to be.

“I wouldn’t even present this to the board to ask them to consider it,” school board and negotiating team member Rod Harding said after the 2 1/2-hour meeting. “The criteria is that we will not give raises that cost people their jobs. To fund their proposal, our body count would be losing two positions for this year.”

Union negotiator Dot Russell presented a compensation proposal that included provisions relating to salary, insurance, work day length, work year length, step (seniority) schedule and teachers’ preparatory time. The union is giving the district a deadline of Sept. 30 to decide.

“This is package is just that — a package,” Russell told the district. “If you don’t accept it as a whole package by Sept. 30, then it reverts back to whatever we have on the table right now.”

The union’s proposal includes a pay freeze until February, when a 2.5 percent cost-of-living increase would kick in. That’s down from the 3.3 percent the union previously had asked for.

“That’s only 1.25 percent for the whole school year,” Russell said during her presentation to the district.

For the 2010-11 school year, the union is seeking a 3 percent increase unless the state school funding falls below $6 billion statewide, in which case the increase would be 2.5 percent, Russell said.

At the beginning of the meeting, Nancy Hungerford, negotiator for the school district, distributed a statement rebutting a union contention made at last month’s negotiating meeting. “The statement was made … that the district can afford to give the cost-of-living raise that the Rainier Education Association union has asked for in their contract proposal,” she said, adding the statement “is simply not accurate.”

“The board did not include any cost-of-living funds in this budget,” Hungerford said. “That’s why the board has been so adamant about not giving cost-of-living. For each 1 percent of a cost-of-living raise is a loss of one full-time staff.”

Russell acknowledged the budget didn’t include cost-of-living compensation, but said there is still money available for the raises.

“Your budget message said you budgeted 7 to 10 percent increase for insurance,” Russell told the district. “Our insurance proposal is less than a 1 percent (increase), so reallocating funds from that would work.”

This was the ninth negotiating meeting between the two groups. The district and the union can bargain for 150 days, which is up on Oct. 10. If agreement isn’t reached, either side can declare an impasse when talks would go to a mediator and that may in inevitable, Hungerford said.

“I think it’s going to be difficult to settle economic terms without the help of a mediator.”