MLSD, Teachers Association reach tentative agreement

MOSES LAKE — Members of the union representing Moses Lake School District teachers will vote Aug. 20 on a tentative agreement with the district. Depending on the outcome of the teachers’ vote, the agreement could be considered by the Moses Lake School Board at its Aug. 22 meeting.  

District superintendent Carol Lewis said the board would have the option of delaying its vote since approval or rejection before school starts is not mandatory. But a vote before school starts would be ideal, she said.  

The memorandum of understanding between the district and the Moses Lake Education Association follows the rejection of an educational programs and operations levy in April, and the subsequent discovery of accounting errors that led to the draining of the district’s reserves.  

The MOU will be in effect through the end of the 2024-25 school year.   

Education Association President Heather Whittall said the levy failure, and the negotiations, are unprecedented in Moses Lake. 

“This is my 25th year in the Moses Lake School District and we’ve never had a double levy failure,” she said. “Uncharted territory.” 

The MLEA researched how levy funding was spent and concentrated on cuts in those areas, she said. 

“The bargaining team was committed to cuts furthest from the classroom,” she said.  

The draft proposal includes reductions to the extended-day contracts for school psychologists, physical and occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists. Employees in each profession are paid for a designated number of days in addition to the school year, and the draft agreement proposes cutting those by three days. Most teacher training funding would be eliminated.  

Class sizes would be increased in the district’s highly capable program, MLSD Digitial and the Open Doors program. Contractual limits on K-12 class sizes would remain unchanged. Lewis said those limits can be exceeded, but the district pays extra compensation to teachers if that happens.  

“A class size limit doesn’t mean that that the class won’t be larger than what the class size limit is. It just means that teachers will get additional pay if their classes are larger than that,” Lewis said.  

School budgets run from September to the following August. While Moses Lake will end the 2023-24 school year far short of the target for reserves set by district policy, Lewis said it’s likely MLSD will have a carryover. 

“We do expect to end the year with some kind of positive fund balance, and we’ll need to wait until (all expenses) are in to say exactly what that is going to be,” Lewis said.  

Under state law the district must submit a balanced budget to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction by Aug. 31 or MLSD could be subject to what are called “binding conditions.”

While state law provides a way for districts that don’t have a balanced budget to borrow against future local tax revenue, the option would come with certain stipulations, including oversight by the North Central Education Service District and OSPI. Lewis said she thought the district could avoid that. 

“We are going to do everything we can to create a balanced budget,” she said.