By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

The Hays USD 489 Board of Education continued contract talks Tuesday night with the Hays National Education Association negotiating team, addressing several topics as the groups continue to work toward agreements on issues for the upcoming school year.

The way teachers are paid for university credit courses was among the first matters of discussion.

USD 489 Superintendent Dean Katt suggested that money saved could be used to pay for course materials for concurrent classes. Currently, the district pays for textbooks that are provided if the course is not for college credit.

Three options were presented as potential work-arounds for the way teachers are paid for college credit courses, including the university paying directly to the teachers, but that topic will be looked at again at a later date.

Time off from work was also a big topic of discussion during the meeting, as board members looked at a wide variety of systems across the state including some with only paid-time-off leave, others differentiating between sick and personal days. While the meeting looked at how many days off a teacher would be eligible for during their tenure, the larger issue was how unused days may be paid out.

On that issue, committee members informed the board they had not received the counter-proposal dealing with how to pay out accrued sick leave at retirement. One of the main concerns of the committee is teachers could lose the payout for accrued days if the policy is changed.

The committee suggested the new payout plan could have length of tenure grandfathered in, rather than across-the-board maximums for every teacher in the district. Under that plan, length of service would determine the rate of pay for leave days, including sick and personal, if those days are paid out as part of the end of service with the district.

The committee had previously asked for 100 days as the cap, while the board suggested 80.

“Eighty days was still workable,” said Zach Butte, member of the negotiating committee, adding “the teachers would still be able to request days out of the sick leave pool.”

At 100 days, the cap would allow only one sick leave request, while under the 80-day plan they would need to ask twice in order to make it to a disability claim.

With time-off policy left to be discussed another day, the meeting turned to arbitration and grievance policy in the district.

The current proposal from the committee is to make the loser of the arbitration pay the cost of the arbitration.

“It would incentivize people to do the right thing” said Kim Schneweis, co-chair of the negotiating committee.

Currently, the district does not have a due process statement, which would alleviate some of the concerns for the committee as to the way arbitration is handled.

“We look at this binding arbitration as security (since) we don’t have through due process,” Butte said.

The last — and most heated — discussion of the evening surrounded health insurance for the district, with a divisive line being draw between the two groups. The negotiating team suggested strongly that the current contract through the state should continue to its end, while the board wants to look at other options to cut substantial expenses.

The current insurance provider was voted to continue through next year as part of a three-year agreement signed with the insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who manages the state group plan that includes USD 489. There is one year left in that agreement. While there is no financial penalty to ending insurance through the state plan, doing so would remove the ability to return to the state plan for five years.

“We feel like we need to honor that,” Schneweis said.

A change in insurance provider first was looked at as a way to increase salaries across the district. Last year, a change would have saved the district approximately $600,000, according to the board. However, the current provider makes getting other quotes difficult, because claims data is not released until after the sign-up window at the beginning of the school year. That policy has created a question mark in the amount, if any, a change in provider would save the district. The district would need to have a private insurer for at least a year before data would become available to see what plans and insurers would be the most fiscally responsible.

“That’s a very big cliff to jump off of if we don’t have to,” Schneweis said.

The next negotiating session will be at 5 p.m. July 7.