New teachers may take K-M to arbitration

Five teachers in the Kasson-Mantorville school district have gone through three stages of contract grievances and could enter into arbitration against the district. The difficulty is that Education Minnesota, the state entity representing public school teachers and educationals support professionals, wants to change the interpretation of contract language, K-M Superintendent Mark Matuska said. 

K-M’s contract language, dating to at least 1975, says credit up to the 10^th year step on a teacher’s salary schedule shall be given for previous outside teaching experience in the duly-accredited school upon initial employment. 

The grievants wish to change the intent of the language from “up to” to “shall,” which would grant all their experience from working within their previous public or private school districts.

And, under a contract plan urged by Education Minnesota, a teacher with experience elsewhere might expect to be placed on corresponding step of the salary scale in the K-M district.

Meanwhile, the district, in recent negotiations and in agreement with Kasson-Mantorville Education Minnesota (Education Minnesota’s local entity), agreed to a new contract which eliminated the first five steps of the salary schedule, meaning steps on the grid no longer represent years of service. 

“That is the key,” Matuska said. “Current K-M teachers realize that steps on the grid no longer represent their years of service to our district. So in reality, a teacher outside of the district would be making considerably more money than a teacher with the same amount of experience within the district. 

“For me, Education Minnesota’s proposal treats new staff differently than those who are loyal Kasson-Mantorville teachers, who have spent quality time teaching within our district,” he said. “And we dropped those five steps to try to increase the salary of incoming teachers. And we were happy to report that we were number one in the HVL (Hiawatha Valley League Conference) for starting teacher salaries. Which is kudos for us and kudos for KMEM. It helps us attract teachers in this era when we don’t have a lot of teachers applying for positions.”

Education Minnesota union field staffer Jeff Hyma discussed the contract issue at length with Matuska and the K-M School Board on Dec. 18. The Board denied a Level III grievance for the five teachers.

Matuska said each of the grievants, who had signed contracts in their previous positions, were provided a copy of the Teacher’s Master Agreement before signing their contract with K-M. And each signed contract provided their step and salary for the upcoming school year, and informed the school board that they signed for a higher salary than they made teaching in the previous school year.  

“I thought the contract offers for the new teachers were equal and fair to our current staff salaries,” he said.

Matuska said the grievants would surpass current K-M teachers with the same amount of experience by nearly $200,000 in career earnings.

He said a request for arbitration may be filed by Education Minnesota on behalf of the teacher grievants. 

Hyma told the school board that arbitration would cost the school district about $7,500.

He said the two-year increased personnel costs to the district could cost more than $75,000 if an arbitrator rules in favor of the grievants.

“Which means we could be heading to arbitration soon,” Matuska said.

He said 42 years of past practice by multiple superintendents without a grievance will be a crucial factor for an arbitrator. 

"I was hopeful that we (K-M and Education Minnesota) might be able to find a strategy prior to going to arbitration that was fair to the current teachers and would eliminate both of these costs to the district,” Matuska said, “but Jeff Hyma and I were unable to get that done.”