BRISTOL — After almost two years of negotiation, the Addison Northeast Supervisory Union’s negotiating committee and teachers’ union this week came to an agreement on a teachers’ contract.
The exact terms of the new contract, which were ironed out Monday night in executive session negotiations, haven’t yet been released. But Lanny Smith, lead negotiator for the school boards, said that the terms will be made public after the first school board votes on the new contracts.
“The negotiating teams have come to a tentative agreement,” said Smith, who also chairs the ANeSU executive committee. “It is a four-year package that should be ratified within the next week by all the boards.”
Since the end of June 2010, ANeSU teachers have been working without a collective bargaining agreement. In January 2011 the school boards imposed a contract, and in October of that year the teachers’ union called an impasse in contract negotiations, asking for a third-party mediator to help reach common ground.
That mediator issued a fact-finding report last month — drawing from both sides’ proposals, conditions at nearby school districts and overall economic conditions — to help reach a compromise between the union and the school boards.
Heading into Monday’s meeting, the union was demanding that the school boards follow the guidelines laid out in the report. But several key differences — revolving around issues like salary increases, health insurance premiums and mandatory teacher dues paid to the union — remained up in the air.
Reporter Andrew Stein is at [email protected].