Coventry superintendent previews tentative teacher and support-staff contracts; ratification votes postponed

Superintendent Don Cowart presented a timeline and fiscal analysis of tentative three-year agreements with the Coventry Teachers Alliance (CTA) and the school-related professionals (SRP) during a school committee meeting, and the committee postponed votes on ratification to the next meeting.

Cowart told the Coventry School Committee the negotiations were atypical in timing but necessary after the district changed health-care trusts earlier this year. "I thought it was important to do the presentation so that when people come to the next meeting, they've had some time to, digest the information, understand what's being discussed," Cowart said.

The superintendent said the district and union leaders opened the collective bargaining agreement specifically to address prescription-drug plan language and to set a new three-year salary schedule. Under the tentative CTA deal Cowart described, salary increases would be 1% in year one, 2% in year two and 1.75% in year three; the SRP proposal is described as 2% each year. Cowart said the CTA schedule averages 1.58% over the three years compared with a 10-year teachers' average of about 2.4%.

Cowart presented the financial-impact calculations the district used: he said the total, cumulative cost of the CTA salary schedule compared with the base year is about $5.4 million; the SRP total cost is about $1.2 million; and the combined total shown on the presentation was roughly $11,000,003.83 when measured against the base year in the district's fiscal model. Year-over-year incremental amounts shown on the slide were about $1.34 million for 2027, $1.694 million for 2028 and $1.648 million for 2029 for CTA salary costs.

Cowart said the district closed a dispute over pharmacy management that included expedited arbitration filings and a temporary restraining order. He said lawyers for both sides and union leadership worked outside the courtroom and signed a memorandum of agreement that cleared the way to change prescription-management vendors on July 1. "A lot of that settlement agreement had to do with an extension on time for people to get their prescription drug plans in order," Cowart said.

In public comment on Zoom, Kelly Aranakis, representing the Coventry Teachers Alliance, said the ratification vote by teachers had been contentious because the proposed raises are modest. "It was a little bit contentious, because teachers are getting very minimal raises," Aranakis said. She said the CTA's ratification reduces projected salary growth compared with a previously used 2% placeholder in the district's five-year projection, producing more than $1 million in projected salary savings and nearly $1 million in expected savings from the new prescription plan.

Committee members asked for clarification about the district's fiscal year closing and whether the proposed contract would increase the 2026 deficit. A staff member identified as Chris answered budget-process questions, saying final FY2025 closing figures were not yet available and that the district expected to present an updated five-year projection at the next meeting.

The school committee announced it would postpone votes to ratify the CTA and SRP agreements until the next meeting to give members time to review updated audit and fiscal materials. The committee had earlier recessed into executive session to discuss collective bargaining and litigation under R.I. Gen. Laws cited during the motion.

Next steps listed by Cowart included updated five-year projections and a fiscal-impact memo to be available to the committee before the ratification votes.