The Philomath School District and its classified employees union have signed off on updated contract language clarifying how vacation time is calculated following confusion over a chart that hadn’t been revised in years.
Superintendent Susan Halliday briefed the School Board on the change during its Aug. 20 meeting.
Halliday said the issue centered on a section in the collective bargaining agreement with the Oregon School Employees Association’s Philomath chapter which lays out how classified employees earn vacation time based on hire date.
Halliday said the classified union flagged the discrepancy, prompting district and union representatives to review the language. She said they determined a revision was needed but concluded a full contract ratification process wasn’t necessary because the fix didn’t alter how vacation time is actually administered.
“The agreement was it changes nothing of practice or intent of the agreement,” Halliday said. “It is only a better representation of explanation.”
Rather than reopening the full agreement for ratification by both the union membership and the school board, the district and OSEA finalized the change through a memorandum of agreement, signed by OSEA co-presidents Amber French and Laura Schunn, OSEA field representative Debra Blanchard and Halliday.
“We just wanted to make you aware of what that was and why we weren’t going to go through a whole ratification again, and being thankful that there was a catch of somebody saying, ‘I don’t understand,'” Halliday told the board.
Board Chair Tom Klipfel asked if the corrected language would carry forward into the district’s next contract negotiation with the classified union.
“The updated language has already been replaced in the contract that’s posted on the webpage,” Halliday said. “And so it’s already there and in practice, and so when we get back to renegotiating in a couple of years, it’s the default. It’s already there.”
The current agreement between the district and OSEA runs through June 30, 2028.