BEND, OR -- Now that Bend-LaPine Schools has a tentative contract deal with the teachers’ union, they’re hoping to soon have the same for their 900 classified employees. That includes custodial, cafeteria, transportation, health providers, and clerical positions.

Oregon School Employees Association chapter president Debbie Christian tells KBND News they’ve worked without a contract since last June, “We're still obviously bargaining, we have several temporary agreements within our financial articles, but there's still some very important areas that we need to discuss and work through.” She says they’re looking for a four-year deal, “We would do wages and benefits for the first two years of the contract, which is this current year and the next school year and then open it again, next school year for the next two years. I would characterize this bargaining season as slow and steady. It takes a lot of time and effort to work through the full contract language along with the financial articles.”

The district’s Scott Maben thinks a deal is close after eight months of negotiations, “We’ve made a lot of progress with the classified staff’s bargaining unit in our most recent meetings, which leads us to have some optimism about what we can do.” He adds provisions from the previous contract stayed in place while they work toward a new deal, “Clearly, it's taken us a long, long time to get to where we're at today. I would say we're very close to the end. …Since we began this round of negotiations at the end of last school year, both of the bargaining teams have been working through a really long list of items that are in the OSEA contract.” A bargaining session was held Wednesday night and another is planned for Friday.