Negotiators for the St. Tammany school district and the union that represents its employees have hammered out a new collective bargaining agreement that provides an additional step raise for employees, as well as extra incentives for teachers willing to move into hard-to-staff areas.
The new agreement between the school district and the St. Tammany Federation of Teachers and School Employees will come before the St. Tammany Parish School Board for formal approval on July 8. The old collective bargaining agreement expires June 30.
The agreement, which runs 91 pages, spells out myriad matters for the school district's nearly 6,000 workers, ranging from salaries to benefits to working conditions.
Superintendent Frank Jabbia talks to students at Madisonville Elementary School. Jabbia visited two schools to kick off the 2023-24 school Pine View Middle School and Madisonville Elementary School on Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023.
The district’s average teacher salary is more than $58,000. The additional step increase represents a $500 raise to teachers and $350 to support personnel.
The agreement also includes a number of incentives and stipends for things ranging from certification to teachers agreeing to move into hard-to-fill areas.
For instance, teachers who agree to move into special education classrooms can receive an additional $1,000.
“Every district is struggling,” Schools Superintendent Frank Jabbia said of trying to staff teaching posts in general, and special education posts in particular.
Meanwhile, the starting salaries for first-year teachers and teachers with prior experience but who are new to the district will be increased by $1,000 under the new agreement.
Jabbia said the four-year agreement also includes a stipulation that from Feb. 1 to March 1 each year, the district will review its financial picture to see if more money can be paid to employees.
“We always want to think of the employees. Everybody’s hurting right now,” he said, noting the rising costs families are enduring.
Jabbia and Brant Osborn, the president of the federation, were the chief negotiators of the new deal. Osborn was not available for comment.
The new agreement follows a few salary bumps for the district’s employees in recent years. In 2022, Jabbia and Osborne negotiated raises of around 4.4%, a nearly $21 million commitment by the School Board. And in 2023 teachers received an additional $1,000 and other employees received $700.
Those increases came as the school district struggled mightily to fill teaching ranks that had been depleted during and after the pandemic.
Jabbia said that while staffing is healthier now than it was directly following the pandemic, finding and keeping teachers can still be difficult.
He said the school district's chief feeder schools — Southeastern Louisiana University, UNO and the University of Southern Mississippi — all report fewer students seeking teaching degrees.
Jabbia said the district has had some success with its Teach St. Tammany program, which seeks to steer people with college degrees in other areas besides teaching into the classrooms.
"It's been a great program for us," he said.