At 7 a.m., unionized East St. Louis school teachers donned their “Support Local 1220” signs and started picketing the school buildings to demand a better pay scale. The teachers’ strike has cancelled all classes and school activities, forcing the district’s approximately 6,000 pre-kindergarten to 12th grade students to stay home.
East St. Louis School District 189 and the East St. Louis Federation of Teachers, Local 1220, have been in collective-bargaining negotiations since last school year. And on September 29, the negotiating committees from the union and district reached a “tentative agreement.”
However, the union membership – or the teachers – voted to reject the agreement Tuesday night and proceed to strike on October 1 if a better agreement wasn’t drawn before then.
Sharon Crockett, president of the Local 1220, said they rejected the offer because it wasn’t fair. With the proposed pay scale, it would take teachers 21 steps – or 21 years – to get to the top of the pay scale. Previously, it only took 11 years to be able to earn the maximum salary. According to the district’s website, the starting salary for a teacher with only a bachelor’s degree is $42,700 and the maximum pay is $74,125.
“In order to retain and recruit teachers, the pay scale they presented to us did not look good for the future,” she said. “We have 45 teachers to retire, and it’s hard replacing 45 people in one year.”
Dave Comerford, of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, said this pay scale will affect all teachers, not just the new ones.
“It’s really an equivalent to a career-long pay cut,” he said. “We’re not talking about pay raises here. We’re helping them hang on to what they have. Don’t give them cuts that we don’t believe are necessary.”
According to the district’s comparisons to other school districts in the area, the teacher’s current pay scale is steep. For example, it takes teachers 25 years to get to the top of the pay scale in the Cahokia Unit School District #187, and 30 years in the Granite School District #9. East St. Louis teachers’ starting salaries are also several thousand higher than the surrounding school districts, according to the district’s data.
The tentative agreement included a one-time stipend of $2,000 in lieu of a salary increase for union members and $1,000 for non-union members. The increase pay scale for salaries would be on average 2.6 percent for union members and 1.5 percent for non-union members.
The current “11-step salary schedule” contains step increases between 4 and 7 percent. The average step increase is 5.1 percent. But the district said it could not afford this pay rate anymore.
According to the district’s website, for school years 2011 through 2015, the district’s enrollment has declined by more than 1,400 students. Due to the declining enrollment and “prorated general state aid payments,” the district’s claim for state aid declined $16.5 million from 2011 to 2015. Student enrollment is also expected to continue to decline.
The district had to make budget cuts, resulting in closing two schools prior to the 2012 school year and five schools prior to the 2013 school year. About 470 positions have not been hired – or 40 percent of the staff – and union and administration employees have experienced salary freezes since 2012.
The district has regained its footing, with the help of some temporary funding sources – including isolated legislative allocations. It now was $30 million in “unrestricted fund balances,” which is less than four months of current operating expenses, the district said.
The district sent out a letter on Sept. 30 to the community stating that the current deal is “mindful of the district’s obligation to its residents and community stakeholders.”
“Simply put, to do otherwise would not be fiscally responsible and would set the district on an unsustainable financial course,” states the letter, which was signed by Superintendent Arthur Culver and Board of Education President Lonzo Greenwood.
However, Comerford disputed this sentiment.
“These teachers showed their commitment to work with the district in tough financial times,” Comerford said. “They agreed contractually to pay freezes. We have seen no data to support the district’s claim that they can’t do this. And that hasn’t been their claim to us at the bargaining table.”
One of the signs that teachers carried stated, “Mr. Culver, if the district is poor, why do you make $250,000 a year?”
In 2014, Culver’s salary was $234,000, according to data on the Belleville-News Democrat salary database of public employees.
Yesterday, East St. Louis High School students walked out of school and marched to the Board of Education office support teachers.
Junior Reyondous Estes, a starting quarterback at the high school, said he organized the protest with senior Trevour Simms because teachers told them that they plan on striking Thursday.
“The thing that got our attention was when they said that this thing could last over a month,” Estes said. “That’s Homecoming. That’s football season. That’s volleyball season. If they get their pay raise, we will get to play this game Friday. We have a season planned and an education to get.”
Paul Thies, an Earth Science teacher at the high school, said they’ve already decided to push back Homecoming into November.
“The kids are upset about it,” he said. “Teachers are upset about it, but kids are very resilient and they understand. They are still going to have a Homecoming. I know they support us.”
Thies said teachers have to keep up with the cost of living, and they are going on their fourth year without a pay increase.
“It’s upsetting,” he said. “I really don’t want to be here. We’d rather be in the classroom. We’re all in it for the kids.”
Follow this reporter on Twitter @rebeccarivas.
