By Kevin Lavery and Tom Weber, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – There's a new development in the St. Louis teacher contract dispute. The union reached a tentative agreement on the district's latest proposal early this morning (Tuesday).
Union and district leaders met for several hours overnight before a federal mediator brokered the deal.
While not revealing specific information in advance of a vote, school board attorney Ken Brostron says the new deal brings some economic issues in line with what the union had been asking for:
"Certain certificated staff are going to get payments made this year that were not in the last proposal; there's been some modification in the health insurance benefits to the benefit of the teachers."
The union's executive committee will meet and review the offer this morning. They're expected to recommend that the full membership accept the offer when they meet to vote this afternoon at 3:00.
"We addressed all of those issues that we said were sticking points for us," said union president Mary Armstrong Tuesday morning, a few hours after the agreement was reached.
"And of course when you're in negotiations like that, no one truly gets everything that they want. But what we were able was to address those issues and make some compromises where some of the problems we had will be resolved immediately and others in the near future."
This morning's agreement comes after the union last week recommended members reject the contract that had been up for a vote until today.