Rockwood Re-Opens Negotiations on Teacher Salaries

The Rockwood School District’s administrators may not be the only employees receiving a raise after the school board voted on April 25 to re-open negotiations with the district’s teachers union.

The vote occurred in closed session and, according to Chief Communications Officer Kim Cranston, came at the request of the Rockwood National Education Association (RNEA). The request pertains to the salary schedule section of the current collective bargaining agreement, which is in place from July 1, 2012, through June 30, 2014.

RNEA President Suzanne Dotta said they asked to re-open salary talks after the district said it would end the year with far more in its reserves than it had previously been estimated. According to the RNEA's website, it's a difference of more than $20 million. 

"Had we been armed with the correct information about what the fund balances would be, we probably wouldn't have settled for the 2.75 percent average raise that we did," she said. 

In a statement released by the district, Board President Bill Brown agreed that the upwardly revised financial picture is one of the primary reasons the board voted to re-enter talks with the union. 

Brown added that there is also an issue of timing, given that the district's leadership is in a state of flux and talks were scheduled to begin next year on a new contract anyway.

“We believe this can be addressed now so the interim superintendent does not have this on his/her plate,” Brown said.

The RNEA is also likely to employ the same argument used to recently justify an increase in the average pay for the district's administrators -- what Rockwood teachers earn relative to their counterparts in the area.

"The salary of the teachers in the Rockwood School District is in the bottom half of St. Louis County," Dotta said. 

She added that despite this, Rockwood's teachers have been able to provide a "tremendous breadth of opportunity for students." Coupled with the newly realized fund balance information, Dotta said the union felt it was time to act.

Brown’s statement did not address the specifics of the negotiation, but said the board is “committed to ensuring we have qualified teachers and staff in all of our buildings.”