The Keys teachers union lowered its demands for raises, but only slightly, continuing to reject the Monroe County School District’s pay offer in the latest round of contract negotiations on Monday.</p><p>Interim Superintendent Joseph Burke said he would take the union’s latest offer to the School Board for consideration, although he didn’t expect board members to change what has been a unanimous stance.</p><p>“I think that the board has gone as far as it intends to go at this point in time,” Burke said.</p><p>If negotiations reach an impasse, an administrative law judge can hear arguments from both sides and issue recommendations. If both sides accept, the contract would then be ratified by union members and the School Board.</p><p>But if one side objects to any of the recommendations, a legislative hearing must be called with the School Board acting as judge. The board could then impose a contract with a majority vote.</p><p>Leon Fowler, president of United Teachers of Monroe and the union’s chief negotiator, said he expected an impasse and would “make a decision to fish or cut bait before too much longer.”</p><p>Fowler again rejected the district’s offer of $600 bonuses for teachers and $350 for other school workers to be paid in December, plus “step” pay increases starting in January.</p><p>In past years, employees have moved up “steps” in a salary schedule, earning more based on years worked. </p><p>The step pay and bonus would apply to all teachers, bus drivers, food service workers, custodians and maintenance workers, whether they are members of the union or not.</p><p>Step-pay increases have ranged from $73 to $107 a year for teachers with four to 14 years experience. The increases are $3,942 to $6,596 a year for teachers with 15 to 25 years experience and a bachelor’s degree, and higher for teachers with master’s and doctorate degrees.</p><p>Keys public school teachers are the highest paid in Florida. The average teacher salary is $56,272 for 10 months of work. </p><p>That doesn’t include pay supplements, such as $3,518 a year for middle school teachers who voluntarily take on a sixth teaching period, and $5,000 a year for academic coaches. </p><p>After rejecting the district’s offer, Fowler asked for step increases plus 1.5 percent cost-of-living raises paid retroactively from July, when employee contracts begin. Most teachers would get pay increases from when the new school year began in August.</p><p>The request was lower than the 3-percent raises requested when negotiations began this Spring. It is also lower than the 2-percent raises dozens of teachers demanded when they addressed the School Board at a meeting last week in Marathon.</p><p>“The board understands that the teachers have immense value,” Burke told Fowler and other union representatives on Monday. </p><p>“The employees are the most valuable resource we have in the district, so the board wants to compensate the teachers as much as they can,” he said. “The issue is, they’re looking at a fiscal year next year that’s going to be very, very difficult.”</p><p>Burke said he anticipated further drops in Keys property value, the district’s primary revenue generator, as well as further decreases in state funding.</p><p>Fowler has argued that teacher raises could easily be paid out of the district’s $6.87 million reserve.</p><p>But on Monday, Burke said $1.1 million of that is tied up in a state account and that $3.7 million needs to be saved as a contingency fund in the event voters don’t re-approve a property tax referendum in 2011. </p><p>That measure moves about $11 million per year from the district’s capital budget for school construction and renovations to the operating budget specifically to pay teacher salaries.</p><p>Fowler called the contingency fund a “defeatist attitude” by the board.</p><p>“The way the board is characterizing it is they’re anticipating the voters to vote it down,” he said. “This is just a way to take $3.7 million off the table for the next three years,” he said.</p><p>“We’ve got to live in the moment,” Fowler continued. “We have to survive now. If things get drastic in 2011, we’ll all have to make an adjustment. There’s a lot of things we can do between now and 2011.”</p><p>Burke’s latest offer included a $30 reduction in employees’ monthly health insurance contributions.