On January 12 at 2:15 am, RUSD and RTPA settled a tentative agreement for the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 teacher contracts.

“Did we reach our goals? Mostly. We got some great language for special education in our contract and some great language on safety which was really important to us. There were a couple other language pieces we were able to get,” said Mrs. Colleen Crowe, government teacher and president of the Rocklin Professional Teachers Association.

Along with the RTPA accomplishing their goals for safety and special education language, the teachers received notable compensation.

“Money wise, compensation wise, we were able to get 6.86 percent raise over two years for all teachers and we compressed our salary schedule, which just means instead of topping out at your highest salary at 25, you will top at your 17. That will make us more attractive to future employees.”

One of the biggest concerns the RTPA had regarding teacher salaries was that our District’s teacher salaries would push potential teachers away.

“The point was to make the District look more attractive as we head into a teacher shortage, so that when people want to come here, they’re not just coming here to get trained and then leave and go work in Roseville, which is what we were starting to see.”

Although a decent amount of the RTPA’s goals were achieved, there were some goals that were left to be negotiated in next year’s contract.

“Some things we were not able to do, like we wanted some language..to decrease class size, we wanted to cap the number of sections our elementary VAPA and PE use because there is not limit. Right now they teach 34 sections of PE Elementary level.”

The two big factors that contributed to the contract being settled were the new school board and community support.

“The new school board was able to move the school district in a more positive way than the last school board. Even though we didn’t change very single member, we were able to elect some new people that brought some new perspectives.”

The community played a big role in the contract being settled as well.

“It wouldn’t have happened if our members hadn’t been thoroughly engaged and the community hadn’t been behind us…this community really loves our teachers, and we really love our community.”

“I think the district finally realized we need to get a settlement so we can…start a new relationship with employees instead of it being so adversarial. Even though the contract is settled, there is still a lot of work to be done to work on that relationship between employees and management.”

After around 18 months of negotiations, the RTPA and RUSD have finally settled the teacher contract for this past and current school year.