Birmingham Teachers Ratify 2010-11 Contract

The 580 teachers of the Birmingham Education Association ratified a tentative contract Wednesday night, BEA President Scott Warrow confirmed Friday.

A BEA bargaining team, comprising teachers from all schools, has been negotiating with administrators at since spring 2010 over the details of the contract that would have covered teachers for the 2010-11 school year.

The staff contract ended June 30, 2010, and since then, teachers have been working under an extension of last year’s contract.

Warrow said both teams met for more than 35 bargaining sessions in the past year. During the bargaining sessions—which would stretch on for four to nine hours at a time, Warrow said—both sides clashed on employee pay, health insurance, working conditions and teachers’ duties outside the classroom.

Birmingham Schools officials could not be reached for comment at publication time.

Details of the contract will be revealed when the tentative agreement comes up for approval at the Birmingham School Board's March 1 meeting.

Warrow said he was relieved that the two sides had reached an agreement, though the process will start over again soon. This time, both sides will have to contend with .

“The state of school funding has made it very difficult to resolve our differences,” Warrow said.

Snyder's proposed budget, released Thursday, looks to cut $470 per pupil from the state budget, asking that teachers bear a higher burden in health care costs to avoid cuts in instructional budgets. Warrow said that while the BEA was expecting Snyder’s tax cuts for businesses, the cuts to education took the teachers group by surprise.

“We did not know that it was going to come at the expense of school districts,” he said. If the governor’s budget is passed, Warrow said 2011 bargaining sessions may be even more difficult.

“It’s more difficult to take more cuts,” Warrow said. “This is not a career that the state of Michigan is going to support.”