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Arbitrator rules in favor of teacher in salary grievance

By
Mavis Fodness

An arbitrator with the state’s Bureau of Mediation Services ruled in favor of a Luverne Public Schools teacher in a grievance filed in October 2015.
Luverne Education Association filed the grievance on behalf of Shirlee Gilmore, an elementary music instructor, after district officials denied her requested salary lane change based on graduate credits.
Both parties attended an arbitration hearing in April with written briefs submitted to the arbitrator on May 27.
Arbitrator Thomas Yaeger made his decision Sept. 14.
“We are going to look at what’s going to change for us going forward in some of our hiring practices,” Luverne Superintendent Craig Oftedahl told School Board members at their Sept. 22 meeting.
The current district practice provides for the superintendent to approve accepted graduate credits in writing at the time of hiring.
In Gilmore’s grievance she thought she had 17 graduate credits recognized at the time of her June 2014 hiring, according to the grievance. It wasn’t until her request for a salary lane change was denied that she learned seven of those credits were not recognized, until the arbitrator ruled in her favor.
Gilmore is in her third year of teaching vocal music at Luverne Elementary School.
No specific dollar amount was released, but Gilmore will be granted her salary lane request retroactive to the grievance file date.

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