The Aspen Education Association and Aspen School District hope to reach a resolution in a salary negotiation dispute that will enter mediation next week.
The school district’s teachers union declared an impasse in negotiations on April 10 after the AEA and district leaders could not agree on proposed salary increases in the upcoming academic year. The AEA wants a 12% base salary increase to reflect inflation and the cost of living in Aspen. The school district offered an 8.5% base salary increase when negotiations began in February.
The AEA argued new revenue streams from a mill levy override approved by voters last year could go toward the increase. But district officials and the teachers’ union disagree over the use of the new voter-approved revenue streams. Revenue from the increased Aspen Public Education Fund sales tax, the increased Snowmass Village Public Education Fund property tax and the mill levy override are expected to bring in an additional $10 million to the district in the upcoming fiscal year.
The district asked voters to approve the new funding mechanisms in November to continue recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers, rebuild its depleted fund balance and build up its coffers ahead of an anticipated funding shortfall in fiscal year 2032, when a new statewide school finance formula is predicted to be implemented. The new formula will negatively impact a handful of districts, including Aspen.
The district told the union it wants to use about $4.5 million from the new Aspen sales tax and Snowmass property tax revenues for its salary proposal. The union wants the district to use a portion of the projected $5 million mill levy override revenue to go toward its salary proposal, but district leaders want to use that revenue to build back its reserve balance, which decreased 75% over five years.
After convening an expense-cutting task force in 2024 and winning voter approval on the new revenue streams, the district is trending in the right direction to get back into better financial standing, ASD Interim Chief Financial Officer Max Marolt told the ASD Board of Education on Wednesday.
The two salary proposals are within $400,000 of each other, Marolt said, and neither would “make or break” the district’s financial situation. But he and other district leaders are suggesting they take a cautious approach to spending, especially as it plans for 2032 and some potentially rocky sales tax years in the interim.
The district could see a decrease in sales tax collections in 2027 when the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport is scheduled to be closed for nine months for renovations. Sales tax collections were also down in January, a typically slower month, Marolt said, but the lack of snow this winter could impact the district’s fourth quarter collections.
“I think the district is in a situation where we definitely want to pay our staff, and I think we have the ability to give a pretty generous raise, but I also think that we need to leave a little room for some of this uncertainty to shake out,” Marolt said. “We talked about how AEA would kind of like the raise up front and then keep it flatter over the next six years … whereas, I think in my opinion, I would prefer taking a stair step approach as we start to see some of this uncertainty eliminated.”
But AEA President Marnie White said the union’s proposal is critical to retaining teachers now. When the union declared the impasse, it said past salary increases have not kept up with inflation or the cost of living.
“When we have people who are working multiple jobs because they can’t afford to live here otherwise, having that money now makes a pretty humongous difference,” White told the Aspen Daily News. “When you are deciding as a staff member, I’m going to leave and go to another district or go do a different job because I can’t afford to live here, a promise down the road really doesn’t help them when they have to pay rent or have to buy groceries or have to take their kids to the doctor.”
The district’s proposal includes step increases, which district leaders said would amount to about a 10% increase overall. AEA said when negotiations started, the district said it would offer a 10% increase, which union leaders said they expected to be the base increase.
A number of ASD teachers spoke during public comment at the Wednesday board meeting to express support for the union’s proposed 12% salary increase. They urged district leaders to use the mill levy override funds to go toward their raises, which many of them said was a campaign promise they made to voters.
“As I think about the middle school, I can think of 19 teachers who are in their early to prime stage of their career. I can also think of 11 teachers, just at the middle school, who are going to retire in the next decade, so where are these young teachers going to be in five years, and who’s going to replace our veteran leadership?” Kris Kaplinski, a math teacher at Aspen Middle School, said during the meeting. “The way I see it right now, our district has a decision, and we can choose to put this money into a savings account, or we can choose to use this money to invest in our people.”
“I’m strongly suggesting that we invest this money in our people, I think it’s going to pay big dividends,” he added.
Superintendent Tharyn Mulberry called the decision to use the mill levy override funds to replenish the district’s reserves a “responsible approach.”
Mulberry told the Aspen Daily News that the district “made an offer … we thought was fair and generous at the time,” but it is “very open to negotiating what that looks like with [AEA] in the future.”
Negotiations will enter mediation on April 30. Both the district and AEA said they were hopeful to reach a fair agreement.