The agreement came about a week after the president of the union, Neil Mahoney, spoke at a school board meeting and said teachers are facing an overwhelming workload.
Planning periods, where teachers can grade, eat, go to the bathroom, make copies and lesson plan, are being taken away, Mahoney said.
The last contract, which ended in June, includes one 45-minute planning period for all teachers in grades kindergarten through 12, and a 30-minute lunch for a normal school day. Most of the teachers’ time is expected to be taken up by instruction, according to the last contract.
Mahoney also said that he knows teachers who have left the district due to the overwhelming amount of work the teachers currently have.
“The reasons shared with me for their leaving include overwhelming workload, loss of planning time, their safety and the safety of the students due to the number of fights that are seen every day,” Mahoney said during the meeting.
Teachers are stressed and exhausted, he said, and feel their health is being impacted, he said.
The last contract limited class sizes and gave teachers additional money if the district needed to put more students in a class.
Depending on the grade level, classroom maximums are between 22 and 35 students, with more students in high school classes. Middle school teachers would not need to see more than 160 students in a day, and high school students would not need to see more than 170 students in a day.
If class sizes were overloaded, there would be a written explanation and a payment of $300 per student for grades K-6 and $60 per student for grades 7-12. No more than four extra students could be added to a class.
The Dayton union was the only teachers union in the area that didn’t have a contract as of the beginning of the school year.
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