District management’s compensation offer

In this issue: 

• What happened at bargaining last night, including District management’s “best and final” compensation offer 
• Special JCEA Secretary election

Bargaining Update!

Your JCEA bargaining team came to the table last night to negotiate your JCEA contract for the second to last session of this year! 

These are the proposals that were passed at the table (as a reminder, JCEA proposes language written in blue, District management proposes language in red, and when we reach agreement, it is highlighted in yellow): 

Compensation and Article 17

The district basically said no to all our proposed language in Article 17. Management then gave a “best and final” compensation offer (slide 10), which was certainly disappointing, but had a couple of positive aspects. First – they have taken a pay freeze off the table which means they have heard our message about this being unratifiable. Additionally, they are offering a small, one time stipend of 1.25% for educators on step 22 the salary schedule. They also recognized that if they cannot compensate educators more, they need to give you time back, so they are proposing converting 2 non-contact days to non-workdays, the same as educators received this year. 

Other components of the proposal: 

• 0% COLA
• Steps and Lanes
• No increase to the final lane of the salary schedule

Speaking of time…

Article 5: Time Management

District management finally gave us a counter-proposal for Article 5, which they have been sitting on since March 5th. Their proposal included: 

• A reduction of the required additional hours worked in 5-3-2-4, from 22.5 additional hours to 20 additional hours. They also agreed to some of our proposed language which names the activities that can count towards these hours. 
• Reducing the District-wide non-contact days from fourteen (14) to twelve (12) for next school year as a part of the compensation agreement (described above). The two eliminated days—October 13 and February 12—will be converted to non-workdays for all educators, with no impact on their work calendar or compensation.
• Providing you with less educator directed time on non contact days, reducing the time from 60% to 50%.
• Striking our proposed language for elementary early release time. 
• Striking our language which asks central department administrators with a teaching license to guest teach 9 times throughout the school year. 
• Agreement to our clarifying language in 5-3-7 around flexing hours to maintain a 40-hour week, so long as it does not impact instructional time, result in missing an assigned duty, or require a guest teacher, explicitly stating at the table this does not require “permission” merely notification to admin.

Article 18: Special Education

JCEA passed a counter proposal to provide stronger protections around your 300 minutes of planning time, clearer parameters for what needs to be included in a school’s para coverage plan, and language around communities of practice for early career SPED educators. 

Article 13: Leaves

Instead of engaging in any productive negotiations on this article, the district struck all of our compromise language in our previous proposal, which would work to resolve the issues people are facing with the conflict occurring with the district short-term disability policy and FAMLI. 

We know a lot of this is frustrating – we feel it too – but we are not done negotiating yet! We have one more session and we need YOU there. Join us for our LAST session on May 19, 4:30pm to help your bargaining team get this year’s tentative agreement across the line!

You can find a list of all bargaining events and the status of all the items on the negotiations table on our bargaining action page. 

JCEA Special Election

Voting is now open for the special election for JCEA Secretary. JCEA is holding a special election to fill the Secretary position and complete the remainder of Ang Anderson’s term which will end May 31, 2027. If you do not have your ballot, check your SPAM/Junk email folder, and if you still cannot locate it, email cwiggins@coloradoea.org and she will reply to you next week. Your link to vote is unique to your email, so please do not forward it to another member who cannot find their ballot, as they will be voting on your behalf.  

 Voting will close at 5:00pm on May 21, 2026.

Candidate for JCEA Secretary: 

• Julia Johns