The Anne Arundel County Board of Education has reached a tentative agreement in contract talks with the union for 1,500 secretaries and teacher assistants, resolving a two-month impasse.
Negotiations had stalled in September over the issue of raises for employees who worked for the school system for more than five years. Negotiators for the union said the group has been overlooked while salaries for teachers, maintenance workers and administrative staff have increased.
Under a compromise reached last week, the board said it would create an income bracket representing a 2.5 percent increase over the highest existing pay step. The Secretaries and Assistants Association of Anne Arundel County agreed to the raise being granted gradually - half of it next year and the other half in 2004.
"It's a give-and-take process," said union President Bernice Chorba, a secretary at Pershing Hill Elementary School in Fort Meade. "The problem is, money is tight."
The starting salary for a teacher assistant is $13,850, and $20,300 for a secretary, according to human resources Director David Lombardo.
About 1,100 secretaries and teacher assistants would be eligible for the pay raise, part of which would be paid beginning in January.
Assistant Superintendent Joseph Wise said the cost of adding the step would be about $360,000, but spreading the raise over two years would ease the financial burden on the school system.
"Because of our ever-tightening financial picture, we had to be very sure we could find the funds to accomplish this," Wise said.
For all secretaries and teacher assistants, the board also agreed to grant a 1 percent cost-of-living increase, retroactive to July, and an additional 3 percent increase beginning next July, contingent on budgetary conditions.
The union canceled a demonstration that had been planned at Board of Education headquarters this week, when talks had been set to resume before a mediator. "It was a very amicable thing, and we're very happy it worked out the way it did," Chorba said.
The union membership and the school board are expected to vote on the tentative agreement this month.