By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — Teachers will get raises totaling 9.86 percent over three years, under a contract that won unanimous, tentative approval by the Board of Education this week.

The agreement, which will cost the school district about $5.5 million between July 2022 and June 2025, goes next to the Representative Town Meeting. If the RTM takes no action, the deal is approved. But if the RTM votes to reject the pact, the contract would be referred to binding arbitration.

Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice, at Monday’s school board meeting, called the negotiation process a collegial experience.

“It was truly a process where folks felt honored and respected,” Scarice said of negotiations, which involved not only school district officials and some board members, but town Board of Finance and RTM members as well.

John Bayers, the school system’s director of human resources, said the deal would pick up when the current contract ends in June 2022. It will increase salaries, on average, by 3.41 percent in the first year, 3.25 percent the second year and 3.2 percent the final year.

 There are about 550 teachers in Westport’s public schools.

The increase is based on the annual step process, not a general wage increase, Bayers said.

The current 20-step salary scale for teachers, based on longevity and education, spans from $49,059 to $125,062

The new agreement would include a high-deductible health premium plan of 19 percent in the first year and 19.5 in the next two years.

“Another important topic” for the Westport Education Association, the local teachers’ union, is creation of “a sick leave bank for members in the unit,” Bayers told the board.

Teachers will also get access to more online university programs, and the high school and elementary schools will create leadership teams similar to what exists at the middle school level.

The WEA ratified the agreement with the school board at a meeting on Oct. 14.

“The WEA is pleased that we reached an agreement before having to leave it to binding arbitration,” WEA Co-Presidents John Horrigan and Karen DeFelice said in a joint statement.

Horrigan, a librarian at Coleytown Middle School, called it a fair settlement.

“We are not the highest, nor the lowest” in the region, he said of Westport salaries. Rather, “middle of the pack.

Bayers called Westport teacher salaries competitive.

“Our retention rate of teachers speaks to that,” Bayers said.