Dear Colleagues,
Last day of school: If you are finished with your responsibilities for school on Thursday, May 31 then you do not have to come to work on Friday, June 1. If you recall that is now in our contract.
Article 6A.1 last sentence:
Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, if a teacher has completed all end of year responsibilities indicated on their building’s check-out list, the teacher will not need to report to work on the last day. If the teacher attends the last day of work, the teacher may leave when their list is complete.
200 day employees work one extra week, so their last day will be June 7.
Next year the last day for students will be on a Friday (because there will be no school on Easter Monday). The same rules will apply.
Median Salary: Many of you may have read Patrick O'Donnell's Plain Dealer article about median teacher salaries around the state. (see link)
We are pretty high up on the list, with a median salary of $84,538, which is somewhere around MA10 Step 13. This seemed kind of high to me, but when I looked at dates of hire I saw that over half of our members are at Step 13 or higher. In some teacher contracts there are 30 steps, so you have to wait longer to make more money. Our contract has 14 steps which gives us more money earlier and for longer - this makes a huge difference over the course of a career. Of course, then we get frustrated because the only raises come from cost of living increases or more education.
In Union,
Ari Klein
CHTU President