Teachers happy with PSUSD contract agreements

The Palm Springs Unified School District and its teachers are pleased with the outcome of months long contract negotiations.

This comes after the district announced a tentative contract agreement with the district’s teachers.

Teacher’s said their calls for respect have been heard.

A few weeks ago teachers held a “Rally for Respect” demanding a pay hike.

Mark Acker, president of the Palm Springs Teachers Association said he’s grateful an agreement has finally been reached.

“Since the fall we’ve been negotiating. So it’s taken a long time and it’s nice to have it done with,” Acker said.

Under the tentative deal, teachers would get a five percent raise that would be retroactive to July 1st of 2014

They would receive another five percent raise on July 1st of this year and an additional half-percent raise sometime in the future.

“We’re very pleased with the outcome of the negotiations. Our negotiations team worked really hard. We really want to thank all the parents and the teachers who showed up for the rally. I really think that was the impetus that got the district to move,” Acker said.

However the district said the rally had no impact on negotiations.

“The rally had absolutely no impact on the timing of the contract, I mean the pace of the contract was moving in a positive direction anyway. Coincidently it just so happened to come to finalization a week and a half afterwards,” assistant superintendent of human resources Mauricio Arellano said.

No matter how the agreement was reached, both sides said they’re pleased.

“It was nice to have two parties work professionally over the past 3-4 months to come to a deal. Which I think is fair and balanced and I think it’s going to send a nice message of appreciation to our staff,” Arellano said.

The salary increase isn’t the only change for teachers.

“We have six pages of changes that we made to the contract, which is unprecedented,” Acker said.

One of the possible changes is a shift to a late start, early release schedule on Wednesdays for high school and middle schools.

This new schedule would allow teachers to collaborate once a week.

The deal still needs to be approved by the teacher’s association and the school board by the end of next week.