Denver public school teachers on the verge of strike

For the past year, teachers in the Denver public school system have negotiated with administrators over a new bargained agreement covering their employment with little success. As the current CBA reaches expiration on January 18, employees face a strike vote on the following day.

If Denver teachers vote to strike it may leave Denver public schools with the choice to close schools temporarily, replace teachers with short term replacements or bargain to give its teachers appropriate compensation.

The final negotiation sessions before the strike take place this week ahead of the expiration of the current CBA. The teachers’ union has already informed the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment of its intent to strike, as required by the Colorado Peace Act.

Denver teachers currently receive compensation through a complicated formula of base salary and bonuses. The existing collective bargaining agreement, like many educational CBAs, includes lanes for salary compensation that reward teachers for continued education and tenure in addition to cost of living adjustments.

Additionally, Denver teachers receive bonuses based upon several additional factors, such as teaching in underserved areas and school performance. The bonuses are funded from a local tax initiative for this purpose. Any bargained agreement lacking these bonuses will result in losing access to that revenue for teacher compensation. This compensation program is known as ProComp.

The divide between the Denver teachers’ union and Denver Public Schools

The Denver Public School system and the Denver teachers’ union (Denver Classroom Teachers Association) remain at odds over several basic issues. The Denver teachers’ union wants to increase funding for compensation, simply the compensation structure, move more funding into base pay rather than bonuses and create salary lanes making it possible for ambitious teachers to earn $100,000 in compensation. The Denver Public School system, like any employer, wants to add far less to teacher pay and maintain the bonus structure. This represents an extremely common divide in labor law negotiations.

The Denver teachers’ union is not fighting for more pay for the sake of simply increasing member compensation. Denver teachers are underpaid compared to surrounding districts and face higher costs of living to live in the same district where they teach–even with regular cost of living pay adjustments.

This has the result of driving successful teachers out of Denver schools and into other surrounding Colorado districts. It also causes many teachers to have to live outside of Denver, increasing their commute and diminishing their ownership of the success of their schools. The lack of financial predictability in pay also makes it harder for teachers to plan appropriately for their financial future.

Denver school administrators talk a good game about wanting to improve these problems but so far fail to put enough of the district’s $1 billion budget towards one of its most important assets. Predictably school officials want to maintain a complex formula based on bonuses because it forces teachers to absorb the consequences of administrative failings by tying their compensation to school success. It also has the effect of reducing overall compensation by preventing teachers from accumulating an increasingly higher salary over time. 

These are not hypothetical problems justifying improving Denver teacher pay. Comparisons of compensation structures between Denver and other school districts reflects underpaid Denver teachers. The high turnover of teachers as they flee Denver for more pay is not hypothetical. It is a real and statistically proven problem. High turnover creates several problems for the Denver school district:

• Schools lose institutional knowledge of the students at the school and loses long term bonds with the local community;
• Teachers with the best qualifications are able to find better paying jobs elsewhere, lowering the quality of teachers remaining in the schools;
• Tenure of teachers at Denver schools declines which reduces the level of experience from which younger teachers can learn;
• The Denver district spends more resources recruiting and training teachers which are lost as teachers leave for other districts, making each teacher more expensive despite not increasing compensation; and
• Teachers have less incentive to invest personally in the performance of the school when they expect to leave in a few years for another district.

Why Denver teachers should strike if Denver Public Schools cannot agree to a fair negotiation package

Denver teachers deserve a fair compensation structure for their work that reflects their value to the community. If teachers are expected to be professionals working in a major city then they should be appropriately compensated as such. Denver school administrators should treat the investment of public resources into recruiting and training teachers as an important investment in the city. A compensation structure that treats teachers as fungible and a burden to the city does not improve Denver schools.

Teachers in Denver should strike if a fair agreement cannot be reached. Denver school officials will feel no pressure to move the terms of their proposal as long as they feel teachers will eventually cave. A labor strike will put school officials on a clock to figure out how to deal with the problem or face a school district without teachers. It will also add publicity to the dispute and motivate parents to push the district towards finding a solution. Teachers around the country face similar problems (including the extremely similar situation currently in Los Angeles). Each union that strikes over unfair compensation will put the next district on notice that it needs to deal fairly with the union or face similar consequences.