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BOE Votes to Approve Negotiated Agreements

Posted September 26, 2017

Hagerstown, MD (September 26, 2017) - The Washington County Board of Education (BOE) voted to approve negotiated contract agreements with the Washington County Teachers Association (WCTA) and Washington County Educational Support Personnel (WCESP) at its business meeting tonight.

 

Members of both employee groups had previously ratified the agreements, leading to tonight’s vote by the BOE. Each contract is retroactively effective on July 1, 2017. The WCTA contract will be in place through June 30, 2022, and the WCESP contract runs through June 30, 2021. For both the teachers and support personnel, salary will be the only item negotiated during the 2017-2018 school year for Fiscal Year 2019.

 

In the teachers’ agreement, a new 22-step scale has been created with 2.5 percent increments between steps, and teachers receive a step increase as part of this year’s agreement. The agreement also calls for increased tuition reimbursement and additional pay opportunities for extracurricular activities such as coaching sports and advising clubs.

 

The WCESP agreement provides a step increase and enhances the scale by one percent. The contract also calls for the creation of a task force that will establish learning opportunities for support personnel, designed to further develop a trained, professional staff. A lifetime cap of $6,000 on career development funds for each employee was changed to allow $1,500 per employee per year, with no lifetime cap.

 

The full contents of both agreements will be available to employees and the general public in the next several weeks.