Teachers at Oak Park and River Forest High School voted Tuesday to approve a three-year contract, ending months of mediation and a negotiation process that stretched over more than a year.
Details of the contract were not immediately available.
The Board of Education was scheduled to meet at 7:30 a.m. today to vote on finalizing the deal, which it was expected to do, said Kay Foran, OPRF spokeswoman.
The negotiating team for the district consisted of one board member and district administrators other than Supt. Susan Bridge, Foran said.
The district will release details of the contract once the board finalizes it, she said.
Teachers and board members reached a tentative agreement during a 12-hour overnight mediation session on Nov. 8., averting a possible strike. Teachers had taken the necessary administrative steps to strike as early as Nov. 15.
The latest board offer released to the public, which was submitted in late October, gave teachers three years of roughly 5.5-percent raises, which included approximately 2.6-percent step increases. Step increases are raises teachers receive after they’ve worked another year at the district, and don’t apply to new hires or to teachers who have reached the cap for step increases.
The offer asked teachers for greater contributions on health insurance premiums, and for concessions on retirement benefits.
The teachers union asked for a package that reflects their performance in making OPRF one of the best high schools among its peers, and filed strike papers just as a precautionary measure, union officials said.
This is the second contract that teachers have negotiated as a union. The last, a five-year deal, expired on June 30.
Negotiations for the new contract began a year ago, and moved into the mediation phase when the school year began without a contract in place. Further delaying talks was the death of the first mediator working on the high school contract.