PARIS — The Oxford Hills Education Association and School Administrative District 17 directors this week ratified a new contract, which Superintendent Rick Colpitts said provides a 2.25 percent increase in base salary.

The previous three-year contract expired June 30.

“It was basically a one-year extension of the previous contract,” Director Barry Patrie, who served as negotiations team chairman, said.

Patrie said negotiations will resume later this year or early next year, presumably for a three-year contract.

“After a period of time it was just decided by both sides that further meetings were not going to be fruitful to either party so, therefore, we agreed to extend the contract with very minor changes to the previous one,” Patrie said.

A representative of the Oxford Hills Education Association could not be reached for comment.

The old contract gave teachers a base pay increase of 2 percent in the first year and 2.25 percent in the second and third years, reduced the annual costs of steps and boosted the the starting teacher pay from $27,797 to $30,600.

Patrie said the association was represented by six teachers and its local and state union representative. SAD 17 directors also had six members at the negotiating table.

Negotiations began in January using interest-based bargaining
that was established in the district about six years ago and good-faith bargaining, a Maine labor law, Colpitts said.

“We used interest-based bargaining in this negotiation as well,” he said. “It’s a process that both teams list perceived problems in the current contract and then seek solutions to them through brainstorming and shared research.”

In the past, negotiations had both parties in separate rooms hammering out what they wanted and their attorneys going back and forth until a settlement could be reached.

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