Grand Rapids' school system has been in talks with the Grand Rapids Education Association (GREA) for more than a year to address wage increases for teachers.
Now, the school district and educators are expected to finalize a 2-year deal. School officials said a tentative agreement raises salaries anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, depending on the teacher’s experience.
According to a release from Grand Rapids Public Schools, the contract covering the current and next year's school year will result in an estimated increase of 11.8%, an additional $10.4 million investment in teachers.
GREA members voted Thursday night to ratify the agreement. Now they wait for the school board at GRPS to approve the agreement to make it official. The board is expected to vote at its meet next week.
GREA president Matt Marlow said the agreement proposes several key changes:
- Increased wages for teachers
- Increased payout for retirees
- Increased overage payment for teachers with students over their class size limit
- Improvements to paid bereavement leave
- Starting a sick bank to help teachers that don’t have enough sick time off
- Increased elementary planning time and monetary stipends for teachers
- Substitutes available to help teachers with planning
- Payroll dues deduction
- Reduction in contractual parent-teacher conference time
- A procedure to discuss teacher evaluation and discipline, if applicable
Kaitlyn Holmwood is a special education teacher for the Grand Rapids Public School district. She said she had to work two part-time jobs this summer to make ends meet.
Holmwood said her wage increase would be over $4,000 this year with another pay bump next year. “I really appreciate that because before we were frozen for three years before getting another raise,” she said. She said she’s okay with this pay scale–for now.
“I do think we need to continue to press for better wages for our staff because we're still not into the average range in the county,” Holmwood said. “I see how hard teachers in this district work and how talented a lot of our educators are, including other staff like our social workers, our psychologists.”
“We have some really talented people in this district and I don’t want to lose them,” she continued.
Holmwood said one of the tricky parts of bargaining is that it’s hard to get 100% of what you want. But she thinks there are significant wins in what they’ve negotiated.
Marlow said a mediator from the state helped the union make progress in negotiations with the district.
“There is a lot of back and forth, and I'm really pleased with all the work that we’ve done over these past 24 months,” Marlow said. “We definitely fought very hard for our membership and to try to get as much as we possibly could in the context of the structure of negotiations.”
“I think it will hopefully make educators in this district feel more secure, like they can get settled at a school site and build roots and a community there and not have to worry about being moved around or shuffled around in the district,” Holmwood said.
