CHARLOTTESVILLE — With the weight of funding cuts bearing down on education, many Indiana school districts are struggling to find common ground and strike deals in teacher contracts this year. 

    But Eastern Hancock teachers and administrators have a history of affable relations. Even in tough financial times, the two sides find common interests to ease what can be tenuous talks. 

    “I want to go on the record,” EH Superintendent Randy Harris told a small assembly of teachers, school board members and taxpayers at a meeting Monday night. “While it was not easy to reach an agreement… I know other districts that say, ‘Your teachers agreed to what?’” 

    The school board voted to approve a teacher contract Monday that holds the line on salaries for the coming year. 

    In addition to freezing pay, the teachers’ contract – retroactive to the beginning of the current school year and extending through next school year – eliminates the salary increment, or built-in annual pay raises. 

    Teachers’ pay range remains unchanged with a first-year teacher earning $30,455 and the most experienced teacher earning $60,912. 

    The district also negotiated a new contract that slashes pay for coaches by roughly one-third. 

    The board voted in April not to fill 39 coaching positions. On Monday, it added three more to the list. 

    The board began what it hopes will be the beginning of that effort by bringing back one teacher from a list of six expecting pink slips at the end of the year. He is middle school English and language arts teacher Scott Knight. The board also voted to reinstate the consumer and family sciences teacher, which was unfilled when Harris recommended eliminating it earlier this year. 

    Harris, along with the administrative staff of the superintendent’s office, volunteered to take a 2 percent pay cut to help avoid laying off even more teachers.
© 2024 Daily Reporter