Photo by Jenny Kirk Lynd School teacher Cheryl Allen, left, and school board chairwoman Amy Korman announced on Tuesday evening, at the conclusion of two closed sessions held after the board meeting, that they’d reached a verbal agreement regarding the 2017-19 teacher contract negotiations.

LYND — It took nearly a year and a half, but the 2017-2019 teacher contract negotiations between the Lynd Education Association and the Lynd School Board appear to finally be coming to an end as both parties indicated a verbal agreement was reached on Tuesday evening.

“Our teams have come together to make a tentative agreement,” said Cheryl Allen, Lynd teacher and lead negotiator. “It feels very good. As of late, both teams have worked very well together.”

Board chairwoman Amy Korman said the resolution felt awesome.

“It’s been a long road and I think we’ve come to some really good compromises,” Korman said. “We want to say we’re tentatively there.”

Along with Korman, board members Mark DeJaeghere and Holly Stelter serve on the negotiation committee.

“The thing that takes the most time is that you meet, go back to your party and then you have to find a time to get back together to have the next discussion,” Korman said. “Then you have more discussion and you have to go back to your board or (teacher) group. It’s a time-consuming process, but hopefully we’ve figured out some ways to do it differently, or better, in the future.”

Korman said it also took ample time because of new components being put into the contract.

“There’s a lot of things to look into when you’re introducing new items into a contract,” she said.

Lynd teachers Martin Boucek and Melinda Boettger serve on the negotiation committee alongside Allen.

“It’s been a lengthy process,” Boucek said. “We’ve been meeting all year long. It’s a process that seems to have taken longer than it needed to.”

Prior to learning the outcome on Tuesday evening, Boucek said he felt it was unfair to ask teachers — especially ones near the bottom of the pay scale — to continue working without a contract day after day and month after month.

“Everybody here breathes for the kids — they’d do anything for them — but at some point, it’s not fair to ask all the teachers to continue working without having a contract settled,” Boucek said.

A majority of Lynd teachers have been consistently attending board meetings every month, trying to keep in the loop and to possibly help push negotiations along. Many of them expressed concerns, especially since the next teacher contract negotiations are set to begin before too long.

“It’s not fair to ask them to be away from their families (especially without being compensated),” Boucek said. “It’s just frustrating.”

But Boucek said he left feeling “very optimistic” after both sides met to continue the negotiations discussion before the board meeting on Tuesday.

“We met prior to the meeting and there were some compromises on both sides,” he said. “I think that’s what negotiations are supposed to be about. I feel like our meeting (Tuesday) was trying to accomplish (a resolution). I didn’t feel that way in the past. I felt like we were on the right path. We were told to stick around (after the board meeting), so we have our fingers crossed. It’s time.”

After the regular school board business was completed during the meeting, board members met in a closed session. Then, the six members of the negotiations committee met, also in closed session.

“Now, we will meet and go through the current contract,” Korman said. “There’s still a lot of scratching on the paper.”

Allen said the two parties will sit down and go through the contract, paying special attention to the language.

“We’ll go through the language and make the appropriate changes that were needed,” Allen said. “We’ll go through those together and make the changes, and then we will bring it to both parties for the final agreement then.”

Realistically, the teacher negotiations contract could be an action item on the agenda at the Nov. 13 board meeting.

“It depends on how quickly we get together,” Korman said. “But there’s a very good chance of (having it finalized) at the next board meeting.”