Byline: Priyanka Dayal

WESTBORO - A lot of teachers in Westboro are tired, and not just because the school year is ending.

And school officials - they're tired, too.

Negotiators from the Westboro Teachers Association and the School Committee sat down to a mediation

The nearly eight-hour meeting capped more than a year of negotiations between the two sides, negotiations that became increasingly bitter with time. Disagreements over pay scales and health insurance turned into claims of distortion and deception.

Last week, teachers and school officials announced a tentative three-year contract agreement, subject to ratification by the teachers union, which will vote officially on the offer in the fall. The School Committee then will have to approve the settlement formally.

"We are relieved to have reached a tentative settlement and are hopeful and confident that the agreement will be ratified by both parties," reads a joint statement released Tuesday by the School Committee and the teachers union.

It didn't come easily.

"It was very tense and emotional," Superintendent Anne L. Towle said of Monday's meeting. "I'm sure the teachers were feeling the same way."

Union president Bonnie Ross said last week that teachers discussed the contract proposal at a union meeting Tuesday afternoon, but did not indicate whether they would vote to approve it in September. Ms. Ross declined to be interviewed for this article.

For teacher contracts, it can take four, six, eight months to strike a deal. In Westboro, negotiations began in February last year. The union and the town reached a tentative settlement in October. The School Committee offered what it called a fair, if not generous, contract. But not enough teachers agreed. In a shock to the school board, the union rejected the offer by a handful of votes: 162-155.

Both sides were tight-lipped about the particulars, except to say they returned to the bargaining table in January. Teachers, holding signs asking for respect and for a fair and speedy settlement, started picketing downtown and at school buildings; they also protested outside one School Committee meeting.

After making another offer in early April, which the union's negotiating team discarded, the School Committee declared an impasse, went public with its contract proposals, and asked the state Division of Labor Relations to intervene by conducting a fact-finding process. It was a rare move, made in an effort to bare the town's difficult fiscal situation and nudge teachers off their more costly demands.

"I cannot remember the last time we had a district contract go to fact-finding," Michael J. Gilbert, field director for the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, said in April. "As money gets tight and things get tougher, these are the types of things that happen."

A few days later, the union responded with a statement accusing the superintendent of bullying and disrespecting teachers, and deceiving the public. The superintendent said she had never heard any complaints about her leadership before.

"This, to me, looks like they're grasping at straws," she said in April.

A later statement from the union aimed to draw attention to the town's nationally ranked school system. Union members said they should be paid according to pay scales in towns such as Concord, Lexington and Wellesley, which also offer high-quality education. The School Committee preferred to compare Westboro to "peer districts" such as Harvard, Northboro-Southboro and Grafton, which are closer to Westboro in size or geography.

While some union members contemplated drastic measures to grab the town's attention and force a quick deal, many regretted not accepting the October offer.

At its height, the contract dispute affected students. Teachers were told to work to rule, according to school officials, so they did not stay at school later than required. A ninth-grader told the School Committee that a science teacher was helping him after class one day when another teacher made them stop. It was 2:45 p.m., and at the high school, teachers are not obligated to stay past that time, the student said. A union spokeswoman declined to comment about the incident.

Union members voiced their disappointment when School Committee member Bruce Tretter was removed from the committee's negotiating team. Mr. Tretter was elected chairman on May 7, after former Chairman Rod B. Jane left the school board to serve on the Board of Selectmen. A week later, Mr. Tretter resigned the leadership post, citing the "current circumstances facing the School Committee regarding teacher-contract negotiations."

On May 21, new School Committee Chairman Craig S. Harris announced the new negotiating team, which did not include Mr. Tretter. Mr. Harris has been a negotiator for the school board since negotiations began, first serving with Mr. Jane, and now with Stephen C. Doret and Karen M. Henderson.

The contract tentatively approved last week includes a 1 percent retroactive raise for fiscal 2008, plus another 0.5 percent added June 30. The raise is not as high as the union had requested, but better than the 0 percent the School Committee previously proposed for this year.

The tentative agreement

includes 3 percent raises for fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2010. Those raises are in addition to step increases teachers receive in their first 12 years on the job. The contract also mandates that the roughly one-third of teachers on the Fallon Community Health Plan who contribute 10 percent to their health plans start paying 25 percent this year. That would bring them in line with other town employees.

Westboro's May 17 town meeting came and went without a settlement. If the contract now on the table is approved by both sides in the fall, voters at the October town meeting would be asked to approve $1.3 million for the first two years of the contract, Mr. Harris said.

Westboro has never before considered a Proposition 2-1/2 override. Town officials acknowledge that at some point, an override will be inevitable. They have not said whether the teacher contract will push the town over the edge.

"I could not say right now, one way or another," Town Coordinator Henry L. Danis Jr. said last week.

NAME: WESTBORO SCHOOL COMMITTEE

ART: TIMELINE

CUTLINE: Westboro teachers contract