Negotiations over pay and working conditions took center stage at the Steamboat Springs School District’s bargaining meeting last week, as district leaders and representatives from the Steamboat Springs Education Association worked to address financial pressures facing local educators.

The education association, known as the teachers’ union, is represented at bargaining meetings by about a dozen educators from across the district to advocate for the compensation and working conditions of staff. Six members from the union and the district, respectively, sat down to negotiate, while more than 30 teachers and staff looked on from the audience last Thursday.

SSEA President Kim Waldschmidt opened the meeting with a stark comparison: While Steamboat Springs ranks among the top three most expensive places to live in Colorado, its average teacher salary lags at 19th in the state.

“We are nearly $30,000 below the average salary in Boulder Valley, and about $23,000 behind Cherry Creek,” Waldschmidt told the room, highlighting the financial strain this gap creates for educators and the district’s ability to attract and retain staff. “To stay competitive and support our teachers, compensation must reflect the true cost of living in our area.”

A slide presented by Waldschmidt showed Steamboat’s starting teacher salary ranked 18th statewide. “Prioritizing educator retention isn’t just an investment in staff,” she said. “It’s an investment in student achievement and community stability.”

Waldschmidt also pointed to the district’s growing reserves, noting that the fund balance has increased by nearly $6 million over the past five years, reaching $13.4 million after the most recent audit in June 2024. 

“We must do what is right for our students and our staff and use these dollars to attract and retain high-quality educators,” said Waldschmidt.

The union’s proposals included a $2.50 hourly raise for all classified staff – those working in roles like maintenance and food service who do not require a license or certification – bringing the lowest hourly wage in the district to $28.50. The total cost of these changes is estimated at $613,244 per year, including retirement and Medicaid contributions.

For licensed staff, including teachers and special service providers, the bargaining team asked to raise the base pay from $53,500 to $56,000, to remove quarter hours and keep only semester hours on the salary schedule and to incorporate the step-and-lane system, a salary structure that considers years of experience and education levels, for all licensed employees, at a total cost of nearly $1.5 million. 

Additional proposals targeted specialized staff, such as occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists and school psychologists, calling for their base pay to be set $2,000 higher than the standard licensed salary schedule, and honoring the step-and-lane system. The bargaining team also asked the district to cover rising insurance costs, though Superintendent Celine Wicks noted those costs are increasing by 24%.

At the conclusion of the bargaining team’s presentation, Waldschmidt suggested potential funding sources for the compensation changes, including ongoing revenue from the previous school year’s budget, the continuing growth of the reserves, new state funding and cost savings from attrition and mill levy increases. 

The majority of the three-and-a-half-hour meeting consisted of the six-member team representing the district being in executive session to privately deliberate the proposals.

After returning from executive session, Stephanie Juneau, the district’s director of finance and operations, announced the district’s decisions.

For classified employees, said Juneau, inflation has been set at 2.3% per year. She said the district decided to raise pay for all returning classified employees by 2.4%, to raise the base of all classified categories by 2% and to raise the maximum pay by a “commensurate amount,” but that they did not accept the $2.50 hourly wage increase. 

The district also agreed to raise the base pay for occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists and school psychologists by $2,000 and to honor the step-and-lane system for employees in those roles.

While the union’s proposal to keep only semester hours on the salary schedule for licensed employees was accepted, the district rejected the request for a $2,500 base pay increase.

On the matter of insurance, the bargaining team had requested the district increase its annual contribution from around $12,000 to $12,189. Juneau said the district agreed and proposed implementing the increase in the district budget effective July 1 — though the increase to employees would not go into effect until January 2026.

“The best we know right now is that the employee contribution on a PPO would increase by $968 a year,” said Juneau. “So right now, there’s about a $39 contribution per month, and it would be a little over $100 a month.”

Juneau added that the employee contribution for high deductible increases would be around $87 per month, bringing the total monthly employee payment for health insurance to approximately $1,050. 

“So, just to understand the proposal … a (first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree) gets about a $1,200-ish step,” said Eric Hansen, regional representative with the Colorado Education Association. “We’re going to eat up $900 of that with health insurance increases?”

“That’s correct,” Juneau replied, to disheartened reactions from some attendees.

Juneau said she thought the meeting “went well.” Clint Koehler, representing Steamboat Springs High School on the bargaining team that evening, said it went “unfortunately, as expected.”

“I think it went well for the first meeting talking about finances,” said Wicks in an interview. “We know moving forward, we just need to make sure that we’re working in reality of what the district truly has to be able to give. But we’re on the same team. I never want to say that it’s the union versus the district. We all work for the Steamboat Springs School District, and I’m sure we’ll come up with a great solution.”

“It’s incredibly disheartening to see the district moving backward instead of forward with its salary proposal. Classified staff are likely to lose take-home income, and licensed staff will see only minimal increases that don’t even keep pace with inflation or the rising cost of living,” said Waldschmidt. “With an audited fund balance of $13.5 million, it’s disappointing that the district is offering so little.” 

“SSEA’s salary proposal costs less than the amount of money the district put into reserves the last fiscal year,” Waldschmidt continued. “Decisions like this make it exponentially harder to attract and retain the staff our schools and students deserve, and even harder for our current staff to survive in this community. We are hopeful the district will make significant movement in its salary proposal at our next public bargaining meeting on May 13th.”