School Board reminded teachers still have no contract

Monday night the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education held their last meeting before classes resume later this month.
The school board was reminded by David Brighton of the teachers union, that not everything was quite ready.
“Looking forward to a new school year. We have lots of new things, new superintendent, new principals, lots of new teachers. What we don't have yet is a contract. The cost of health care is rising at an unsustainable rate for employees to afford. We have a meeting on the 13th. I hope the district will come with an offer that we can consider and we can sit down and discuss and come up with a solution that addresses that cost of healthcare," Brighton said. "Our employees can't continue to pay more and more in their premiums each year. Hopefully we can come up with that solution. Employees do not want to go on strike, but we will.”
Soldotna High School teacher Paul Marks also cautioned the board about the state of the school, which is integrating students this fall from the closed Soldotna Prep.
“I stopped by SoHi today. We're in the midst of trying to consolidate SoHi and SoPrep schools together, and it's a bit of a mess right now. I'm a little bit concerned about how it's how it's fitting together. There's a lot of stuff that's just kind of sitting out in the halls. There's a lot of stuff that was sitting in the commons that just kind of got shoved into different places," Marks said. "And this is already going to be a little bit of a tense school year, it just feels that way to start with. I'm still irritated at you guys for increasing my workload by 20%. I mean, that five PTR increase, that’s going to be pretty difficult as is, but we have teachers right now that, with the situation, they're going to have to be moving from period to period from classroom to classroom.”
School staff report starting next week, and most students begin classes in two weeks.