Teachers Present Salary Proposals
The contract bargaining meeting with the Wolf Point Education Association and Wolf Point School District featured salary proposals from the Education Association on Tuesday, March 8.
The starting proposal requests for a three-year contract. The proposal features a base salary of $36,303, which equals to a 10 percent increase, for the 2022-2023 school year. The base salary would increase to $38,118, another 5 percent, for 2023-2024 and to $40,024, another 5 percent, for 2024-2025.
The parties’ next meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 21, at 5 p.m. in the high school library.
Prior to providing the proposals, the Education Association had Maggie Copeland, field consultant for the MEA-MFT, present a budget analysis of the Wolf Point School District for the last seven years.
Copeland explained that the average number of elementary students have decreased from 614 in 2015-2016 to 556 in 2021-2022. During that time span, the elementary general fund budget has decreased from $3,729,017 to $3,551,795.
The instructional salary expenditures have increased from $2,296,280 in 2015-2016 to $2,618,069 in 2021-2022.
“That’s not a very large increase from year to year,” Copeland said.
For the high school district, enrollment has gone from 229 in 2015-2016 to 240 in 2021-2022. The general fund budget has increased from $2,057,422 to $2,291,160 during that time frame.
Instructional salary expenditures have increased from $745,736 in 2015-2016 to $923,617 in 2021-2022.
The Impact Aid ending fund balance for the elementary district has increased from $5,276,152 in 2015-2016 to $9,418,877 in fiscal year 2021.
The Impact Aid ending fund for the high school district went from $2,185,382 in fiscal year 2016 to $3,954,579 in fiscal year 2021.
Copeland pointed to the Impact Aid funds as evidence that the school district can afford the education association’s increased salary request.
“Do we have the money to fund it? You do,” Copeland said.
Trustee Mark Zilkoski said that he wants more information regarding the history of Impact Aid funds. Copeland said she will provide the information.
Copeland added that school officials often claim that Impact Aid isn’t stable, but she has been hearing such comments since the early 1980s.
“If Impact Aid goes away, we would be in trouble,” Wolf Point superintendent of schools Loverty Erickson said.
Salaries of current Wolf Point teachers range from $35,653 to $69,306 for a masters degree with about 30 years experience.
Copeland provided information regarding quality educator payment. The payments of $3,385 are made to schools for properly certified specialists, administrators and teachers. Individuals holding emergency certification do not quality for the QE payment. Copeland said because Wolf Point schools employed 23 teachers with emergency certification during the current school year, the district lost out of $78,855 of possible state funding.
Copeland said Wolf Point is losing teachers to other school districts that offer larger salaries.
It was noted that Poplar has more taxable land and more Impact Aid.
“At some point, your students are going to pay for that,” Copeland said.
