Thursday, July 30, has been set as the date that a mediator from the Bureau of Mediation Services will come to Albert Lea to help reach a resolution on the teachers’ contract.

The mediator has been selected, and he will meet with negotiators from the Albert Lea school board and the negotiators from the Albert Lea Education Association, the teachers’ union, at Brookside Education Center at 9 a.m. that morning.

“If we can’t get it settled in a work day, than it’s getting pretty tough,” said Bill Villarreal, lead negotiator with the school board.

The mediator will communicate between the two sides and in working toward a compromise, Villarreal said. The mediator has no say in the final decision and simply tries to get both sides to compromise.

The mediator is only scheduled to be in Albert Lea on July 30, and if the teachers and the board can’t reach an agreement that day, Villarreal said the two sides will have to look to other avenues to resolve the contract.

Villarreal said he hopes a compromise can be reached on July 30. If the sides do not agree on a contract, an avenue the two sides could pursue would be arbitration, Villarreal said, though he couldn’t speculate as to how that process would work.

“We’ll get across that bridge when we get to it,” Villarreal said.

The school board voted unanimously on June 22 to bring in a mediator. The two sides haven’t met since June 8, when a negotiation meeting the following day was canceled because the sides weren’t closer to an agreement.

About nine teaching positions still hang on the outcome of the teachers’ contract, and the biggest issue holding up the negotiations is the 403(b) tax-sheltered annuities.

“I think there’s some other language items that probably could have been hammered out in our negotiations that weren’t,” said ALEA President Jim Munyer. “I think part of the problem is that the 403(b) is probably going to be the big issue.”

The 403(b) issue dates back to wording put in the teachers’ contract about 15 years ago. Larry Kellogg, district director of finance, said the intent was for the maximum amount matched to rise gradually, but it stayed at $2,000 until the Legislature passed a bill last spring that, because of unintended language in the bill, raised this maximum amount to $8,250. This took effect in the middle of a two-year contract and was not planned in the school budget.

Out of 67 teachers in the district with 18 years of service or more, Kellogg said 48 were already contributing more than $2,000 to the 403(b) pension or decided to add to their contributions after the increase. Since the arbitrator upheld the increase, the district is matching additions up to $8,250, which has resulted in $177,000 being paid in monthly increments between Jan. 1 and June 30 of 2009, Kellogg said.

Munyer said the teachers have given a lot in the wording of the contract. For example, the word “maximum” will be removed from the contract. This means the amount the district will match on the 403(b) plan will be determined by a percentage, rather than equaling the maximum contribution allowed for state employees.

Another issue is disability leave, Munyer said. He said teachers have hours built up for sick days that aren’t used, and it’d be beneficial if those hours could be used in other areas.

The health insurance issue had to do with the board wanting to do away with retiree health insurance for new employees. Currently, the Albert Lea School District contributes 92.5 percent of the premium for a single policy until Medicare age, which is 65. The teachers requested a health savings fund be set up in return.

Look to future issues of the Tribune for more on the contract negotiations.