They started another school year without a valid employment contract, but the Snoqualmie Valley School District secretaries soon got one, with a unanimous vote.
All 38 members of the Snoqualmie Valley Administrative Secretaries Association, or SVASA, voted Wednesday, Sept. 10, to accept a four-year contract with the district, union president Karen Seiser reported at the Sept. 11 school board meeting.
School board members unanimously approved the new contract at the meeting, expressing their gratitude for the valuable work that the secretaries in each school building do.
“We have nothing but huge respect for school secretaries and sincerely appreciate all that they do for our schools,” said board President Geoff Doy. “We are pleased to approve this agreement, which we feel honors the secretaries’ needs while balancing our fiscal responsibility to ensure the best schools for our students.”
The contract is retroactive to Sept. 1, 2013, when the previous contract expired, and includes a stepped pay increase roughly equal to a 2 percent pay increase annually. Starting in the third year, the district will also begin paying a portion of the secretaries’ health insurance costs, and will pay the full cost by the fourth year. District staff say the contract terms are similar to the contract for all other classified employees in the district, represented by the Public School Employees union, or PSE.
Both classified staff unions began renegotiating their contracts in the spring of 2013. At the same time, the district began talks with the Snoqualmie Valley Education Association, representing the teachers, whose contract was also up for renewal. Classified staff delayed their negotiations while the district and teachers union hashed out a difficult agreement, just in time to avert a planned teacher strike a few days into the 2013-14 school year.
The teachers’ contract included pay raises for each year of employment, a statewide voter-approved 1.9 percent cost of living increase, and a districtwide 2 percent cost of living increase, along with provisions for health care insurance and limiting class sizes.
Classified staff asked for a similar pay increase, complaining they hadn’t seen a cost of living increase in several years during the drawn-out negotiations that followed the teachers contract resolution. State funding does not include an automatic pay raise for classified employees.
SVASA members also were concerned about their responsibilities in the school health room since they fill in for the district nurses when they are in other school buildings—the district has only six full-time nurses, covering 10 school buildings. Several members raised their concerns to the board during public comment periods at various school board meetings.
Seiser thanked the board for hearing the members’ concerns on this issue, and for the “respectful process” of negotiation. “We felt the board and district really listened to our concerns and worked with us to find a good solution for moving forward,” she said.
All classified employees in the district are now on a four-year contract, expiring Aug. 31, 2017. Teachers, represented by the Snoqualmie Valley Education Association, are in year two of a three-year contract.
