Teachers in Boulder upset over stalled contract talks packed a school-board meeting Tuesday, demanding the district return to the bargaining table, but no new meetings have been scheduled.
Teachers last week voted 94 percent to reject a contract that would give the district’s 2,000 teachers a 1 percent stipend for the 2009-10 school year that would not be applied to their base pay.
Teachers want negotiations to resume, but the district is calling for an independent fact-finder.
Last spring protesting teachers staged whole-school sickouts, and the union instructed teachers to work only to contract and not do any extra work. Union officials say they are not pushing their members toward further job actions and have rejected claims that a strike is approaching.
“We are not anywhere close to that,” said Melissa Tingley, president of the Boulder Valley Education Association. “We are still asking them to go to the table.”
The last teacher strike in Colorado was in 1994 — a five-day walkout in Denver. Any such labor action in Boulder would require one of the parties to ask out of the current contract. The union also would have to file a 30-day notice of its intent with the state labor department.
Jeremy P. Meyer, The Denver Post
