Education Minnesota: More than 50 percent of districts are without a contract deal with their teachers

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: Here's another story that we're following. The union representing teachers in the state's largest school district, Anoka-Hennepin was planning a rally for this evening, but they canceled it after reaching a tentative contract deal over the weekend. While that's good news for the Anoka-Hennepin schools, many other districts including Saint Paul and Minneapolis are still in mediation. That's a step unions needed to take before calling a strike.

The Star Tribune reported last week that 57 districts have requested a mediator from the Minnesota Board of mediation services. Last month, we were talking to commissioner Johnny Villarreal about that, and he said the board typically gets about 50 mediation requests in a bargaining cycle. Joining us right now to talk about the state of negotiations around the state is Education Minnesota president, Denise Specht. Denise, welcome.

DENISE SPECHT: Thank you, Cathy. It's great to be here.

CATHY WURZER: I know you can't talk specifics on this tentative deal in Anoka-Hennepin, but generally speaking, how do teachers do? Will they be happy?

DENISE SPECHT: Yeah. I don't have all of the details, but I am confident that the local there is going to bring the information to the members, and the members will decide if that's a tentative agreement they can agree to. But as you said, we've got quite a number of local unions all over the state that still don't have those tentative agreements or settlements. And that's where we're focusing right now.

CATHY WURZER: What was the big area of the sore points and negotiation in Anoka-Hennepin? Do you know?

DENISE SPECHT: No, I really can't speak for them at all. But this is what I do know, and I think that maybe this answers part of your question is that we're seeing really four themes pop up all over the state. One thing for sure is that health insurance companies are dramatically raising the cost of health care in many of our school districts. And so that creates a situation where any proposed raise, even a small proposed raise will not be nullified by a large increase in out-of-pocket insurance costs.

I think the other thing we're seeing all over is that superintendents and school boards are overestimating the cost of some of the expansions to safety nets, including unemployment insurance for our education support professionals and implementing the new paid family and medical leave act. There are new things to bargain over, including things like staffing ratios so that there's more one-on-one instructional time for educators and their students, things like improving working conditions.

And those are new topics, new things to bargain over. And that's taking up a little bit of time, more time than normal. And lastly, one thing we're definitely seeing all over the place is that management tends to always try to keep wages down in negotiations. We see that at Amazon, Starbucks, car makers. And we're finding just old habits die hard.

CATHY WURZER: You know, last session's education bill boosted public spending for schools by, gosh, 2.3 billion. And that was called historic. And now we're seeing contract negotiations that are getting a little bumpy perhaps, teachers asking for more money. What's happening here?

DENISE SPECHT: Well, we're definitely not seeing offers at the table, especially initial offers from management mirroring or matching what that historic funding was, totally ignoring that. I do think it's really important that we talk about the implementation for things like unemployment insurance or the changes to paid family and medical leave. There was money set aside to implement those.

So the stories of there was no money to account for that, it was unfunded, it's just really perplexing. I mean, if superintendents are worrying about costs for 10 years from now, then they're really ignoring the staff right in front of their face and the fact that we are really in an educator shortage and morale crisis right now.

CATHY WURZER: Can you tell me, Denise, how many other districts are currently without a contract in the state of Minnesota? Do you know?

DENISE SPECHT: Yeah. Well, as of last week-- I've only got numbers as of January 18-- the locals that we represent, about 148 out of 328 had settlements or tentative agreements. So that's about 45% of regular school districts that are bargaining this cycle. And that pace is definitely behind what we normally see at this time in past rounds of bargaining.

CATHY WURZER: When it comes to some of the things you just told us about with the money from the legislature last session, do you have to go back to the legislature this coming session and ask for some more funding? I mean, what's your plan of attack going forward here?

DENISE SPECHT: Well, our plan is to continue to support our locals who are having conversation at the bargaining table right now. They're negotiating for contracts that will allow them to sustain their families, retire with dignity. But they're also bargaining contracts that are going to improve working and learning conditions.

And we believe that that's where we need to be focusing. These contract its are vehicles for recruiting and retaining educators into the field. And we hope that the district agrees with that, the districts that are still unsettled and really think about these contract talks in a really serious way.

CATHY WURZER: Denise, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much.

DENISE SPECHT: Thank you. Bye-bye.

CATHY WURZER: Denise Specht is the president of Education Minnesota, the union representing teachers across the state.