BEMIDJI — More than halfway through the 2023-24 school year, many educators in Northern Minnesota do not have contracts with their respective districts.
Tensions are on the rise as educators are working more than 200 days without a contract, including in Bemidji, where a local judge ordered an injunction against Bemidji Area Schools for interfering with the local bargaining unit’s picketing activities.
“We're working hard to come to an agreement, and we just want the district to agree with us that their teachers should be valued," said Bemidji Education Association President Alison Tisdell. Tisdell is also a teacher at Gene Dillon Elementary School.
The bargaining units for Bemidji paraprofessionals and other groups are still being negotiated, as well, with Bemidji Education Association entering its third round of mediation on Tuesday, Jan. 30.
“There’s a lot riding on these contracts and I think educators across the state realize that their contracts are an important vehicle for all of that.”Denise Specht, Education Minnesota president.
Deer River and Brainerd Public Schools are also in varying stages of mediation with their educator bargaining units, and Pine River and Cass Lake-Bena educators join the many educators without contracts in Minnesota.
Only a third of the state’s bargaining units have settled in school districts in these two-year contract negotiations, according to Education Minnesota, the statewide trade union representing elementary and secondary teachers and support staff.
“Educators that are negotiating their contracts now are looking for contracts that will allow them to sustain their families and retire with dignity, but also create working and learning conditions that will reduce burnout, raise academic achievement and attract new educators to the field,” said Education Minnesota president Denise Specht in a Jan. 11 interview.
“There’s a lot riding on these contracts and I think educators across the state realize that their contracts are an important vehicle for all of that.”
Compared to other contract negotiation years, fewer districts and teacher unions are settling their negotiations outside of mediation, according to Specht.
"Two years ago, we were looking at about half of [the contract negotiations] settled, and four years ago, we were looking at about two-thirds settled," Specht said. “In terms of numbers and pace, if it feels like it's slower, it is.”
Boosts to funding
“The prevailing notion is that this is free money with no strings attached."Kevin Boyles, Brainerd school board chair
School district contract negotiations happen on a two-year cycle, in sync with the Minnesota Legislature’s budget years.
In 2023, the DFL-controlled Legislature touted historic investment into public education, such as an increase to the state aid formula. Typically, the formula sees a 2% increase in the first year and another 2% increase in the second year. But last session, legislators approved a 4% increase in the first year and 2% the following year. Also funded were universal free meals for K-12 students and reducing school districts’ subsidies for covering the costs of special education.
“It was more money than we've seen in a long time, but it didn't make up for years and years of underfunding,” said Eric Jobe, who is mediating on behalf of Brainerd educators.
The Minnesota Department of Education receives and distributes state and federal funds for special education, but school districts often finance some of the costs of special education out of their general education funds.
Two cross-subsidy measures are tracked by the education department: a gross cross-subsidy, which is the total difference between special education expenditures and corresponding revenues; and the adjusted net cross-subsidy, which factors in students who spend 60% or more of the school day outside of the regular classrooms.
Bemidji Area Schools Superintendent Jeremy Olson said in a Jan. 9 interview that the state’s investment into public education was spread across many different areas.
“When we talk about historic, yeah, it's historic, but it's not crazy, right?" said Olson, highlighting the investments into dedicated funds like special education and nutrition. “There was a lot of money spent on education. It just was focused in many different areas.”
School districts are funded through local, state and federal sources. Many of these dollars are considered dedicated, like for school lunches or special education programming. Even with the dedicated revenue streams, districts often find themselves short in some of these areas, filling in the gaps through their general funds.
“The prevailing notion is that this is free money with no strings attached,” said Kevin Boyles, Brainerd School Board chair in a Jan. 23 interview. “What this money did was help catch us up and soften the blow of the fiscal cliff to come.”
“Our teachers simply do not make enough money. ... How do we attract quality talent when we pay less than everybody else?”Andrew Dahlby, Bemidji Middle School teacher
Bargaining for change
Across the state, educators and support staff are demanding increases in salaries to offset rising inflation, increased costs of living and higher insurance premiums.
“We reached a lot of agreements on language items and found common ground on many things, but our salary has become the sticking point,” said Andrew Dahlby, a Bemidji Middle School teacher. “We're not keeping up with inflation. Not even close.”
Teachers on the lowest scale of the Bemidji salary schedule, according to the expired contract, make $42,335 per year. This places Bemidji 10th of 10 comparable schools — like Alexandria, Brainerd, Grand Rapids and Moorhead — according to data collected by the Bemidji Education Association.
“It's just hard to say that we should take less every year,” Dahlby said. “Our teachers simply do not make enough money. ... How do we attract quality talent when we pay less than everybody else?”
In Deer River’s expired contract, the lowest pay grade for new teachers with a bachelor’s degree is an annual $41,728 salary. A new teacher in the district with a master’s degree would make $46,965.
Deer River mediators are asking for a 6% and 5% increase to the salary schedule, for year one and year two of the contract, with the reported district response maintaining a 4% and 4% annual increase to the salary schedule.
Recruiting and retaining quality educators are themes Deer River educators are calling for in their early stages of mediation.
“Teachers in our district are feeling more burnt out and bogged down with their workload," said Crystal Purdie, Deer River King Elementary teacher. “There are more teachers in Minnesota with a teaching license that aren't teaching than are teaching.
“ ... It's a shortage of people that are willing to even do this profession anymore because we're not treated like professionals, we're not being compensated as professionals.”
"It's a shortage of people that are willing to even do this profession anymore because we're not treated like professionals, we're not being compensated as professionals.”Crystal Purdie, Deer River Elementary teacher
According to Minnesota’s biannual Teacher Supply and Demand Report, just over 38% of Minnesota’s teachers who hold a Tier 3 or Tier 4 license are currently not teaching in a public or charter school classroom. The same is true of all licensed teachers. Researchers also found that a third of new teachers leave teaching within the first five years in the profession.
Jobe of the Brainerd Public Schools bargaining unit said the annual 2% increases don’t keep up with inflation and increased costs of living like higher rent, interest or grocery prices. The annual inflation rate for the U.S. is 3.4%.
“It's really hard when we go to the bargaining table and we want to retain our best candidates, our best teachers in schools, to live in the communities that we work in, with rising inflation and increased housing prices,” Jobe said.
The salaries earned by area teachers remain higher than the median income for individuals in the region.
In Beltrami County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, people earned a median of $29,400 in 2021. It was the same median income in Itasca County in 2021, with both ranking toward the bottom among all Minnesota counties. In Crow Wing County, the median individual income was slightly higher that year at $32,400.
Union leader Specht said educators across the state are also bargaining over more than what’s on their paystubs.
“There are more things to bargain over now. Teachers, education support professionals, can now ask about lowering staffing ratios, lowering class size, so that there's more time and attention given one-on-one to students,” she said.
Enrollment and budgets
In 2024, school districts across Minnesota must spend the last of their one-time COVID-19 relief dollars.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, program, included three rounds of federal grants between 2020 and 2021, with the last of these “stimulus and stabilization funds” needing to be spent this year.
The loss of these one-time dollars is one of the pandemic aftershocks still being felt by districts, but declining enrollment can play a factor, too.
“The enrollment in Brainerd has been steadily declining since 2012,” said Boyles, Brainerd board chair. “There’s simply more people choosing alternative education sources, the biggest one being homeschooling. There was a mini explosion of that after COVID because everybody learned from home, and some people found they preferred it.”
Declining enrollment can make a huge difference in per-pupil funding formula, as Boyles explained. The funding estimate can vary, with variables such as local operating referendums playing into the complex equation.
The Brainerd School District does not have a local operating referendum. Bemidji Area Schools’ last successful operating referendum renewed a $180 per pupil levy in 2014, set to expire this year. Referendum questions to increase the operating levy in 2020 and 2021 were both rejected by voters in the Bemidji School District. Deer River Schools haven’t had a successful local operating referendum since 1997, according to the Minnesota Department of Education.
“We can’t make up for two decades of underpaying in one biennium,” Boyles said. “We operate with what the state gives us. ... Inflation hits us, too.”
What's next?
With so many districts in mediation, negotiators on both sides of the table are waiting longer to settle these differences.
Brainerd School District staff and bargaining unit leaders will meet in mediation for the first time at the end of February. Bemidji’s third mediation date is scheduled for Tuesday. Negotiators at Deer River schools, as of mid-January, had yet to meet the threshold for a mediation hearing.
“We hope that even though school districts and their staff have signed up for mediation, we hope they don't wait for that mediation date,” said Specht, Education Minnesota president. “We hope that they will continue to come to the table, talk about the issues, and try to come to a resolution rather than waiting.”
“At the end of the day, these are hard-working folks,” Boyles said. “It’s not great for morale.”
