Collective bargaining begins for CPS parent educators

Negotiations are underway between Columbia Public Schools and parent educators.

The Thursday meeting was one of several negotiation sessions the district will have with the parent educators as they lay out agreements for the 2017-2018 school year.

Parent educators work for the school district’s Parents as Teachers program and visit the home of parents, working with them during a child’s early years until they enter kindergarten.

For the 2015-2016 school year, CPS parent educators served more than 1,000 families from birth to kindergarten age.

Thursday’s negotiations were mainly working conditions based, the next meeting on April 14 will discuss parent educators’ pay. The group says it will be asking for a 5 percent pay raise to stay competitive.

“We want to attract high quality parent educators,” Allie Gassmann, spokesperson for the parent educators, said. “On our staff we have licensed social workers and doctors, among others.”

In order to keep those parent educators and attract more, parent educators say they want to make sure they are getting paid appropriately. CPS says they always strive to be competitive.

“Our parent educators are the highest paid in the state,” Dr. Dana Clippard, deputy superintendent said. “So we definitely compete at a state level for compensation for our parent educators.”

The district says at the next meeting it plans plan on making a counteroffer to parent educators. The next meeting is scheduled for April 14. Back in November, the board voted to change the district’s salaried parent educators to hourly to comply with the expected overtime law, but because that law never took effect they remained on salary.