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PUTNAM — The Putnam Board of Education announced that they and the Putnam Education Association have finalized contract negotiations for the teachers’ contract covering the years 2014-2017.
Once again, the two groups used Interest Based Bargaining for negotiating the contract.
Interest Based Bargaining is a type of negotiation which is different than traditional labor negotiations.
In Interest Based Bargaining, each side presents a number of issues to discuss, brainstorm and collaborate to find solutions.
This contract resulted in total salary increases of 3.0 percent in the 2014/15 school year and 2.75 percent for both the 2015/16 and 2016/17 school years.
The total salary pool over the life of the contract will be 8.5 percent. This 8.5 percent increase is just under the state average for three-year teacher contracts negotiated this year.
In addition, the teachers have agreed to change the way their health insurance will be funded.
All teachers will now be required to have a Health Savings Account.
This change has potential savings for the Board of Education over the long term. The Board and teachers’ union also agreed to some minor contract language changes.
The contract was filed with the Town Clerk.
Michael Morrill said, “Interest Based Bargaining has allowed us to work together collaboratively with the teachers to find solutions to issues in a non-confrontational manner. We were happy to be able to collaborate with the teachers along with the Board of Finance during this negotiation. IBB helped the Board and teachers to settle under the state average of 8.84 percent along with restructuring health insurance plans. Any savings that we realize will help us maintain the positive momentum that we have experienced in the last few years.”