The Jennings County School Corporation held a public hearing to present terms of a tentative, one-year agreement covering 2025–26 that would substitute a $1,250 stipend for a base salary increase, expand personal and association leave, adjust employee costs for medical and dental insurance, and add several contract provisions, officials said.

The proposed agreement matters to teachers and students because it sets pay and benefits for the coming school year and includes changes to grievance procedures and potential early retirement incentives. The school board will vote on final approval at its November meeting, according to the timeline presented at the hearing.

“Nikki, staff member,” who presented the agreement, told attendees: “This is the hearing, so I will share this. This is also already posted on our website, for anyone that would like to look at it. And then we have time for public comment and comment from JCCTA as well.” She said the district was proposing a one-year contract and described the principal terms to be incorporated into the collective bargaining agreement.

Key provisions presented include:
- Pay: Because of the district’s fiscal situation, the agreement as presented would provide a one-time stipend of $1,250 for the 2025–26 year rather than a permanent base pay increase. “It is only a 1 year contract. And so that base stipend would be $1,250,” Nikki said.
- Salary schedule/education credit: The contract would allow “latent changes” (horizontal movement) on the salary schedule to honor additional education, subject to a board resolution. Future horizontal moves would require educators to hold an initial practitioner’s license, to take courses from an Indiana-approved list that apply to the content area, and to receive superintendent approval.
- Leave and association time: Personal leave would increase from three days to four days. Association business time for bargaining-team members and chief spokespersons would increase from six cumulative days to 10 days total. The agreement would add five additional paternity/adoption days drawn from sick leave, bringing available leave related to those events to up to 20 days in total.
- Insurance: Using rates provided by the CISIC consortium, the district said medical insurance costs to employees would increase by 5% next year, dental costs would increase by 12.5%, and vision costs would remain unchanged.
- Extra-curricular/athletics and ECA language: The agreement would add language allowing staff to split stipends for coaching or sponsor positions with approval from the building administrator and human resources. The district also presented example stipend calculations (not part of the contract text) for hypothetical additions such as boys varsity volleyball and splitting middle-school soccer into separate boys and girls teams. The contract would also update ECA appendix dates and clean up class-coverage language.
- Course-events pass: The contract would provide an all-sports pass for teachers to attend district events; the pass would not apply to IHSAA tournaments or certain fine-arts events.
- Grievance procedure: The grievance process would add a fourth step allowing a grievance to be appealed to the school board after the superintendent-level step; presenters outlined timelines for board review and response.
- Early retirement incentive language: The contract would include language enabling the district to offer an early-retirement incentive in the future (not a promise to offer one). If the board chose to offer such an incentive, the district would notify employees by Feb. 20 of the year in which it is offered and give employees until March 20 to accept, the presentation said.

Molly, a representative of the Jennings County Classroom Teachers Association (JCCTA), thanked both bargaining teams and said union members had strongly approved the tentative agreement. “We were super pleased our members voted this in very highly. It was, very much like a 90% vote in,” she said.

The presenter noted that the hypothetical stipend figures shown for additional sports and coaching splits were provided for informational purposes and are not themselves contract provisions. No public commenters addressed the hearing during the time allotted, and the chair closed the hearing and adjourned.

Next steps: the board is scheduled to consider final approval at its November board meeting; no formal board action was taken at the hearing.