The Eastern Pulaski School Board approved the corporation’s master contract with the Eastern Pulaski Teachers Association Monday. As part of the deal, teachers will get a slight pay increase, according to Superintendent Dan Foster. “In the least case scenario, over the two-year period, it’s a little more than three percent for veteran teachers and upwards of five-to-six percent for some of the younger teachers, trying to get those years in there, as we’re trying to catch that up,” he said. “We were able to bump the beginning salary a few years ago, but we hadn’t been able to add much to that at this point. So this will help get them there.”
Foster said the new contract is an improvement from the old one. “Very fair deal for teachers this year,” he commented. “The last couple years, the way the compensation model was working was not very good. And we knew that, but we had the two-year contract already set. And when we did that, there was a lot of things that nobody knew all the rules yet, so you were trying to do the best you could.”
Among some of the changes in the new contract, teachers will now be allowed to accumulate their personal days for up to a year, to end up with a total of six. Foster added that the contract cleaned up some of the language in other areas, as well. “In my four previous years, we had never used the sick bank, and last spring, we had a teacher ask for a half-day out of the sick bank,” he explained. “And the association president and I got together, and it’s like, ‘This thing’s a mess.'”
The Eastern Pulaski School Board unanimously approved the master contract Monday, after it was ratified by the teachers association last week.
