By Patrick Tepoorten

As the state imposed deadline of Jan. 15 approaches, the North Branch school district and the North Branch Educators Association (NBEA) have yet to agree on a new two-year contract.

Last Thursday district teachers were present at the school board meeting in large numbers, wearing pins that stated, ìNorth Branch teachers are unsettled.î Before the audience and the school board, Charles Bettendorf and Karla Meemken, co-presidents of NBEA, asked the board to do its part to reach an agreement.

ìWe are here to ask that the board acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the teachers by reaching a fair contract settlement that maintains benefits and reflects salary schedule improvements of surrounding districts,î said Meemken. Bettendorf added that he hoped the scheduled continuation of mediation on Dec. 20 would produce a settlement.

He concluded by imploring the board to think about what teachers bring to the district. ìWhen you meet in your closed school board session about negotiations tonight, we ask you to focus on the services we provide our students and the community.î

For their part, the board did not address the subject of ongoing negotiations or provide any indication whatsoever of any progress.

They did not meet in closed session following the regular meeting.

Mediation will continue on Dec. 20. If an agreement is not reached by Jan. 15, the district stands to lose $25 in per-pupil funding from the state. That could add up to over $100,000 in lost state aid for the upcoming school year.

While that figure may seem like a large amount of money, in actuality it represents .0039 percent of overall state funding.

In other district news:

Superintendent Rodney Reisnouer reported that the Schools for Equity in Education (SEE) has completed phase one of a study designed to determine if Minnesota schools are properly funded and, if not, what can be done to improve it.

SEE has determined that the state underfunded K-12 education to the tune of $1 billion for the 2003-04 school year, based on the cost of meeting state and federal education standards. The state funded education in the amount of $7.05 billion in 03-04 when transportation and capital are figured into the equation.

When looked at through the prism of per-student funding for the 03-04 school year, that is the difference between the $4,601 in per-student funding that the state did provide, and a figure of $5,558 which SEE claims is the amount schools needed to educate students to achieve the standards put forth by the state and federal governments for that fiscal year.

Phase two of the study will explore other benchmarks for education funding, including special education, which is harder to quantify. The results of phase two should be available by March or April of next year.

Reisnouer said that he felt the result of the study would be a quest for ìtrue reform in how schools are funded.î

The school board also approved bids for the purchase of four 90-passenger buses, and two 26-passenger buses. The winning bid for the buses was Hoglund, which came in at over $10,000 less than the next lowest bid. The total price for the buses, after trade-in value has been deducted, is $483,210.

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