Tulsa School Board Approves New Teacher Contracts

The Tulsa School Board approved new contracts with two teachers unions at its meeting Tuesday night.

School leaders vote on the contracts every year but postponed negotiations at the start of the school year.

They postponed negotiations until January because of what they say has been a significant uncertainty in our state, anticipating another revenue failure, which was announced Tuesday.

2/21/2017 Related Story: Revenue Failure Leads To More Cuts In State

In January, with the revenue failure likely, they began negotiations and approved them Tuesday night.

While the board acknowledged the agreement does not contain the type of pay raise teachers deserve, they were able to factor in a 1.4 percent base salary increase for the majority of teachers.

For teachers who have hit the top of the pay scale, they will see a base salary increase of .7 percent.

TPS general counsel, Jana Burk said, "What we were able to do was provide them with essentially a catch up range where they are being paid for an appropriate salary based upon their years of service. That's not the maximum that we would like to provide them ever in any situation, but it was what we're able to afford and they understood that."

Surprisingly, no reps from the teachers union were at the meeting, so we weren't able to get the unions’ input on the agreement, but there didn't seem to be any hang ups with the discussions according to the school board.