Provo Board OKs budget, awaits pact

PROVO — The Provo School District Board of Education passed a budget for the 2005-06 school year — with a promise, as board vice president Sandy Packard put it, to "keep in mind we are trying to be flexible and do what we can to help and support our teachers."

The promise underscores the absence of employee contracts for next school year, even though the board unanimously approved the $88 million budget late Tuesday night.

The budget provides $49.7 million for salaries and $18.1 million in employee benefits but is flexible, board members said, for changes that could come as a result of contract negotiations with the unions, which will resume in August.

Last month, when union representatives and district officials could not agree on a contract, negotiations ceased for the summer.

"We do not want a forced settlement because of the budget," Lynda Westover, president of the Provo Education Association, said before the board voted to approve the budget proposal. "So many teachers have said, 'Don't settle. I'm better off under our current contract.' "

The district and employees unions disagree over a cost-of-living salary increase. The district has offered 0.5 percent; the unions demand 2 percent. The budget reflects the district's offer.

The budget also reflects the district's medical insurance offer. The disagreement over medical insurance premiums, which will rise nearly 23 percent, prompted employees to advocate dropping expensive procedures to curb the increase to 20 percent, with the district paying the entire increase. In the 2005-2006 budget, employees must pay 20 percent of the premiums.

Westover said that the district's proposal will most dramatically affect experienced teachers who have reached the ceilings of the pay raises for which they qualify and only receive cost-of-living adjustments. And with the district's medical insurance proposal, they will take home less money each month than the previous year, she said.

District business administrator Kerry Smith has said that all expenditures are necessary and the teachers are not being purposefully targeted.

Westover and members of the school board acknowledged that building the budget was difficult for Smith and his staff.

"My personal opinion is teachers are really underpaid," Packard said. "It's not because we don't care that we're not offering more."

Two groups of employees have attorneys who are preparing to take the district to court over a post-retirement benefit that was canceled. Unions agreed to let the benefit lapse in last year's negotiations, but many employees want a judge to declare that they are entitled to the Medicare supplementary insurance because they accepted lower pay increases in exchange for the benefit.