Budget May Exclude Teacher Raises, Unions Fear

Janey "wants to have good relations with the members of the bargaining units," Pierce said. "The difficulty is in giving employees what they want and doing it within the constraints of the budget."

School board member Tommy Wells (District 3) said he thinks Janey is committed to ensuring that employees are paid fairly, adding that the superintendent spent months working to fix payroll problems that were preventing hundreds of teachers from receiving back pay.

Still, he said, "this is very serious and we've got to have negotiated contracts for our employees." Teachers and other workers, he said, need to be "energized" to support the changes in curriculum, textbooks and academic standards that Janey is implementing. "Dr. Janey has to identify where the funding is coming from or whether something is going to be cut."

In 2004, before Janey took office, the school board said it could not afford a 9 percent raise in the last year of the teachers' union's three-year contract. Some teachers threatened to walk off their jobs, and the council eventually approved $14 million to fund the raise.

In the spring, Janey said the system would be forced to lay off hundreds of teachers if it added money to the budget to pay for the step increases for teachers called for in the previous agreement. In May, the council allocated an extra $19.8 million.

This year's contract talks have dragged on for several months, and representatives from the two largest employee groups, the teachers and bus drivers, said they are disappointed by the lack of progress.

On Nov. 16, the school board rejected a new contract from the union representing 1,400 bus drivers and attendants for special education students. Board members said the contract was improper because it was not negotiated by Janey, as their policy requires, but by David Gilmore, who was authorized by a federal judge to run the special education transportation program as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by parents.

Gilmore said he took control of the negotiations because school officials were "offering a zero-based salary and no performance raise." He said he will ask the judge to force the school board to approve the contract.

George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers' Union, which represents about 4,500 teachers, said contract talks with the school system, which began in February, have been stalled since June.

"We presented a compensation package in June and we're still waiting for a response to that or a counteroffer," Parker said.

"I don't think teachers are in the mood to hear that money is not available," Parker added. "The city has a surplus, and teachers are working very hard."