By Habib Sabet/VTDigger
Rutland teachers and the city’s school board reached a tentative agreement last Tuesday night, May 13, averting a strike planned to begin Wednesday morning. It would have been the first teachers’ strike in Vermont in eight years.
At a marathon school board meeting, the Rutland Education Association — the local union representing the city’s teachers — and district officials struck a deal for a new contract just before midnight following eight hours of negotiations, according to Daren Allen, the communications director for the Vermont National Education Association, the statewide teachers’ union.
Allen said details of the agreement would not be released until after the contract is formally ratified by both parties, a process that could take up to a week.
“This negotiation started at 4 p.m. yesterday, and both parties stayed at the table to get it done. Both parties worked really hard to achieve a settlement,” Allen said. “Today, the teachers are just relieved, and they now want to focus on their jobs.”
After voting to strike last week, the union, which includes approximately 250 members, had intended to walk out of work indefinitely starting Wednesday if no deal was reached. The teachers had been working without a contract since last summer, when the previous one expired.
“The board is happy that we came to a resolution,” said Charlene Seward, a commissioner of the school board. “This is a great outcome for the students to continue out the rest of the year, and we’re happy for the community support, and we’re just glad that we could make it all work out.”
The agreement caps off a year and half of contentious negotiations between the union and the school district, which first began last January.
After months of bargaining, the two parties had reached an impasse over wages.
The union had initially proposed that teacher salaries increase by 15% for the 2024-2025 school year, 10% for 2025-2026 and 10% for 2026-2027. The school board had meanwhile pitched increases of 3% each year, citing restraints imposed by the district’s $63.8 million budget for the 2024-2025 school year.
After failing to find middle ground earlier this year, the two parties agreed to work with an independent fact-finder, who released a report last month calling for about 5% wage increases each year.
Rejecting the mediator’s findings, the school board last week moved to impose a contract on the district’s teachers for the next two years, a decision the union claimed violated Vermont labor laws.
Under the temporarily imposed contract, the board had included salary increases of 4.8% for the first year and 4% for the second year.
