Deal reached for Gateway School District; teachers will not strike

MONROEVILLE, Pa. — A deal has been reached for the Gateway School District and teachers will not strike on Monday.

Earlier this week, teachers let the school district know they were going to go on strike.

They said it was because their contract had expired in June of last year and no agreement had been reached for months. Teachers said they weren’t getting paid what they deserved and there was no raise in sight.

Since the contract expired, 266 teachers, nurses, counselors, speech pathologists, social workers and behavior specialists had been working without a new one.

The situation was made more difficult due to the uncertainty of COVID-19.

“There was several months lost there where we literally, we had nothing to come to the table with. We didn’t know what we could bring,” Gateway School Director Rick McIntyre explained. “There’s a lot of moving parts, you know. Every time you make a little bit of change here, change there, you gotta run it down the chain and back up before you move forward.”

Over the past few days, the district and the teachers union made a final attempt to reach an agreement.

They told Channel 11 that they spent seven hours on Friday and four hours Sunday, trying to work out an agreement.

Fifth-grade teacher Grant Sample — who represents the teachers — and McIntyre sat down together with smiles on their faces saying now they can finally move forward.

“It’s a divisive issue, you know, in an already divided community,” explained McIntyre. “I think striking a deal today goes a long way to healing a good bit of that, so as far as what was said, what was done, how things were viewed, we’re moving past that and we’re coming back together as Gateway.”

This comes just after kids returned to in-person learning. Both sides are happy that there won’t be any more disruptions this late in the school year.

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Cox Media Group