COLUMBUS, Ohio — On Sunday, members of the Columbus Education Association voted to accept the contract the union's bargaining team and Columbus Board of Education agreed to last week.
More than 4,000 union members met at Huntington Park Sunday for the vote.
During the mass membership meeting, union members discussed and reviewed the details of the comprehensive agreement.
The union's ratification of the deal brings an end to the bargaining process with the Columbus Board of Education.
Here are what the CEA said are the highlights of the agreement:
- a contractual guarantee that all student learning areas will be climate controlled no later than the start of the 2025-2026 school year, including installation of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in buildings currently without HVAC, and in buildings that currently only have partial HVAC;
- reductions in class size caps in all grade bands, lowering the number of students in every classroom by two over the course of the contract;
- the first-ever limitations on the numbers of buildings assigned to each elementary art, music and P.E. teachers, with scheduling intended for one specialist per subject area per building;
- the first-ever contractual limitation on the number of CEA positions that can be outsourced to out-of-town corporations, thereby ensuring that our students are educated by experienced professionals from our local community; and
- a ground-breaking paid parental leave program for our teachers, as well as salary increases for each of the next three years which will help attract and retain the high-quality educators that our students deserve.
The Columbus school board is scheduled to hold a special meeting at 8 a.m. Monday following the union’s vote.
The school board and teachers’ union came to the conceptual agreement early Thursday morning after nearly 14 hours of discussions with the oversight of a federal mediator.
Columbus students will return to the classrooms on Monday after they spent their first week of school learning remotely. Some students joined teachers and staff on the picket lines on Wednesday.
Athletics, band and drill team practices resumed on Friday after they were paused due to ongoing negotiations at the time.
During negotiations, the union said it pressed for safer buildings, better heating and air conditioning, smaller class sizes, and a more well-rounded curriculum that includes art, music and physical education.
10 Investigates reviewed repair orders for Columbus City Schools buildings and found that many repairs took weeks - if not months to address. You can read the full report here.