CHERRY TWP — Moniteau School Board motioned to deny a grievance filed by the district’s teaching association, Moniteau Education Association, at a meeting Monday, Nov. 27, regarding a $500 stipend that was negotiated as part of their collective bargaining agreement.

The grievance comes after the board approved a $500 pandemic bonus for all full-time faculty and staff in August.

The $500 payment, made in October, was intended as the stipend, solicitor Andrea Parenti said Tuesday.

The payment, phrased as a ‘pandemic bonus,’ was proposed for full-time faculty and staff using federal relief money from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund.

“(The payment) was termed a pandemic bonus when (teachers) got the check for $500,” Parenti said. “They said it was not the same as a stipend for $500, so they should receive another $500. That’s where the issue lies.”

Parenti said the teachers’ association can decide if they want to proceed to arbitration with the grievance, in which case, Parenti said, there would be a hearing.

The collective bargaining agreement, signed on Aug. 22, 2022, and effective until June 30, 2025, states that “In October of the 2023-24 school year, every member of the Association will receive a one-time $500 nonsalary, nonrecurring stipend from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds (ESSERs).”

During a meeting in August, school board president Michael Panza motioned to include all district staff members in the bonus payments.

Patrick Andrekovich, union representative for the teachers’ association, alleged faculty were actually “excluded” from the pandemic bonus, with the $500 teachers received covering the stipend negotiated in their collective bargaining agreement two years ago.

As part of the agreement, he said teachers accepted a salary freeze for the 2023-24 school year.

“In return for that, the association agreed to accept the $500 stipend as part of the negotiation process,” he said, “because having the salaries remain the same for two years in a row is saving the district a significant amount of money.”

Andrekovich said the bonus and the stipend were “unrelated things,” since the board approved the stipend as part of the contract.

“It was not a bonus — it was part of what we were receiving in return for freezing the salary scale for two years,” he said. “Understandably so, the members of the association were a little confused and, I would say, upset that they were being excluded.”

As of Tuesday, Andrekovich said the teaching association had not decided whether to take the matter through an arbitration process yet.