By Tom Tolen / news@whmi.com


The Brighton Board of Education unanimously ratified the salary reopener portion of the Brighton Education Association’s three-year contract at its meeting Monday night. The two sides had been at loggerheads on the contract for months until a tentative agreement was reached earlier this month.

After the meeting, Board President Andy Burchfield told WHMI that, in his words, “Our teachers are our most valuable asset, and it’s important to us that we provide a fair and competitive wage.”

The 325-member BEA had already ratified the contract, and the board was scheduled to conduct its own ratification vote on Nov. 23rd, but the meeting was postponed due to technical issues involving Zoom - the district’s virtual meeting server. Board meetings have all been online since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring. Again, Monday evening, there were issues with Zoom, with the meeting appearing upside-down on viewers’ home computer and Smartphone screens. Board Trustee Ken Stahl, who has been entrusted with handling the Zoom broadcasts at the board table, said afterward he could have asked at the outset that the meeting be stopped and Zoom rebooted. But Stahl says had he done that, remote attendees at home would have had to be disconnected, plus there was no guarantee that the problem would have been corrected.

Under the contract revisions, teachers will get a 2.2% increase over their current salary for the 20-21 school year, retroactive to Sept. 1st. In the following year, teachers will see an increase of 1.5% over their 20-21 pay rate. However, if the state were to decrease the per-pupil funding level by $400 or more, the pay increase next year would only be 1%. Conversely, if per-pupil funding were to increase by $200 or more for 21-22, teacher salaries would see an increase of 1.75% over the 20-21 pay level. Similar to previous contracts, the agreement also provides an additional 2.3% increase for teachers who complete 30 hours of professional development provided by the district over the remaining two years.

BEA President Barry Goode said Monday night that although he was pleased the board ratified the contract changes, the negotiations should have gone much smoother and more swiftly. Goode says he is, in his words, “hopeful that next time (the agreement) is not after the start of the school year…It needs to handled better.” Goode says there will be no chance of any missteps or delays next year because the two sides now have a contract that is fully settled through Aug. 30th of 2022.

At the meeting Monday board member Bill Trombley asked hypothetically whether the district would be in deficit, if its financially rewarding Shared Services program were no longer around. Superintendent Matthew Outlaw replied that even without the service, the district would not be in deficit, as it had been for several years. In Shared Services, Brighton provides instruction — including certified teachers and course materials — in non-core curriculum classes to smaller schools that, due to size considerations, cannot afford such programs or courses.

There remains one sticking point with regard to teachers. Goode says the two grievances the BEA filed against the board over social distancing and sanitation issues in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic are still not settled. Since the Board of Education denied the union’s Level III grievances, the next step in the process is arbitration. But Goode says he has not yet heard back from the American Arbitration Association, and a date for an arbitration hearing has not been set at this time.

Burchfield said that settling the teachers’ contract “has been a difficult process,” due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions on the economy, adding that, “This year has brought a lot of unknowns, and it was up to us (as a board) to have a better understanding of those unknowns.” The final Board of Education meeting of the year will take place on Dec. 14th at 7 p.m.