MLSD and teachers association reach preliminary agreement

MOSES LAKE — Members of the union representing Moses Lake School District teachers will vote on a tentative agreement with the district on Aug. 20. Depending on the outcome of the teachers’ vote, the agreement could be considered by the Moses Lake School Board at its Aug. 22 meeting.

District Superintendent Carol Lewis said the board would have the option to delay the vote, since approval or denial before school starts is not mandatory. But a vote before school starts would be ideal, she said.

The memorandum of understanding between the district and the Moses Lake Education Association follows the rejection of a levy on education programs and activities in April and the subsequent discovery of accounting errors that led to the depletion of the district’s reserves.

The MOU is in effect until the end of the 2024-2025 school year.

Heather Whittall, president of the education association, said the failure of the levy and negotiations are unprecedented in Moses Lake.

“This is my 25th year in the Moses Lake School District and we have never had a double tax failure,” she said. “Uncharted territory.”

The MLEA has examined how the levy money is being spent and focused on cuts in those areas, she said.

“The negotiating team was determined to limit cuts to classrooms as much as possible,” she said.

The draft proposal includes cuts to extended-day contracts for school psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists. Workers in each profession are paid for a certain number of days in addition to the school year, and the draft agreement proposes to cut that by three days. Most funding for teacher training would be cut.

Class sizes would increase in the district’s highly capable program, MLSD Digital, and the Open Doors program. Contractual limits on K-12 class sizes would remain unchanged. Lewis said those limits could be exceeded, but the district would pay extra compensation to teachers if that happens.

“A class size limit doesn’t mean that the class size won’t be larger than the class size limit. It just means that teachers get paid extra if their classes are larger than that,” Lewis said.

School budgets run from September to the following August. While Moses Lake will finish the 2023-24 school year well below the reserve target set by district policy, Lewis said it is likely MLSD will have a carryover.

“We expect to end the year in the red, but we’ll have to wait until (all expenses) come in to say exactly how much that will be,” Lewis said.

Under state law, the district must submit a balanced budget to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction by Aug. 31, or MLSD could be subject to what are called “binding conditions.”

While state law provides a way for districts that don’t have balanced budgets to borrow against future local tax revenues, the option would come with certain stipulations, including oversight by the North Central Education Service District and OSPI. Lewis said she thought the district could avoid that.

“We are going to do everything we can to create a balanced budget,” she said.