MONTAGUE — With classes resuming on Thursday, Gill-Montague Regional School District educators are positioned to start their second consecutive academic year without an updated contract while they continue to push for salary increases.

The Gill-Montague Education Association (GMEA), a union primarily comprised of the district’s teachers, and the School Committee have been conducting contract negotiations since March 2022. While there was a tentative three-year agreement reached in August 2022 outlining raises between 2% and 3% each year, it was ultimately rejected by the union that October.

“While there were several reasons for this rejection, the main reason can be summed up in one word: value,” a statement previously contributed by the GMEA Executive Board explains. “The GMEA asserts that the committee’s salary offers have been below the current market value in comparison to other local districts and the current state of the job market. This leads to an unstable workforce, where employees seeking higher salaries will be hired elsewhere, leaving our students with a revolving door of professional staff.”

“The district believed that our agreed-upon three-year salary increase was not only reasonable and appropriate, but it was also comparable to many school district settlement agreements negotiated by our attorneys in western Massachusetts,” School Committee Chair Jane Oakes reasoned in a statement.

On Dec. 12, the union returned with a new request of 11% over the three years of the contract, a full 3% higher than the original union proposal, according to Oakes. Both sides then began mediated negotiations in March 2023 and continue to meet.

In June, the GMEA requested respective 2%, 3%, 3% and 3% yearly salary increases for teachers over four years, beginning in 2022-2023. Adjustment counselor Joseph Katz described negotiation difficulties as “an impasse over a difference of 2% salary increases over four years, with disputed salary increases for the 24-25 school year and the 25-26 school year.” The school board’s proposal, meanwhile, involved respective 2%, 3%, 2% and 2% yearly increases over a four-year period.

Negotiations are conducted in executive session, and Oakes said Thursday that she could not provide an update as to precisely how far negotiations have progressed since June while no hard numbers are on the table.

Dozens from the GMEA voiced frustrations during the public comment period of the district’s first in-person meeting since March 2020, held last week inside Turners Falls High School’s conference room. Katz summarized the GMEA’s feelings as the “erosion of union members’ faith in the district operating in good faith” during the meeting’s public comment period.

A primary concern Katz relayed to School Committee members was that they could have the means to pay teachers more, but opt not to.

“It’s hard for me to buy the thinking that the district cannot effectively budget for these increases three years from now when recently, we were having to vote on allocating thousands of dollars in surplus funds days before the end of the fiscal year,” Katz said.

Joanne Blier, director of business and operations, said while the district’s excess and deficiency budget has yet to be certified, she expects it to be “near the cap as it was last year (in the range of $1.1 million).” In addition, the district’s School Choice revolving fund will have a balance of approximately $1.8 million by the end of the year, she noted. The district brings in between $600,000 and $800,000 per year in School Choice revenue and funds a portion of the budget with revenues in reserve.

“Also important to note is that we are using $1 million in [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding] to support our FY24 budget, but those funds will not be available next year,” Blier wrote in an email. “We will need to either reduce positions and/or use more School Choice revolving and [excess and deficiency funding] to support the FY25 budget and the budgets in the years following. We knew this financial cliff was coming when ESSER funds dried up, and so these fund balances have been built up as a way to support the FY25 and FY26 budgets without making significant staffing reductions.”

Blier explained during her scheduled report to the School Committee that surplus funds are also needed to help offset unanticipated expenses, such as those caused by fluctuating tuition numbers — and associated Chapter 70 state aid — when they deviate from initial projections. This can be caused by an unanticipated number of School Choice or charter school students exiting the district.

“I know there’s been some discussion about this huge surplus that we have, but it really can’t be considered a surplus because we don’t know where students are going next year,” Blier said.

Katz also took issue with Blier’s “misrepresentation of Chapter 70 revenues,” citing a June 27 School Committee meeting where Blier said Chapter 70 revenues account for 50% of the district’s total revenues, whereas they actually account for around 30%. Blier confirmed this, saying she misspoke and accidentally cited a figure associated with town assessments, rather than Chapter 70 funding.

GMEA Co-President Heidi Schmidt added that concern over student enrollment is not the only stability issue the district is facing when considering the budget. As of last spring, the district’s staff turnover rate was 22%, a number that Schmidt said “has most likely increased.”

“We know that the relationships teachers have with their students are instrumental to their educational development and personal growth,” Schmidt said. “These relationships are built over years. It is hard for students when familiar faces are not here.”

With the school year set to start on Thursday, Oakes assured that contract talks are still very much active.

“We’re definitely still negotiating with the teacher’s union,” Oakes said. “We’re anxious to have a good contract settled.”

Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-930-4231 or jmendoza@recorder.com.