JEFFERSON TWP — The South Butler School District and teachers union have come a little closer to an agreement Monday at a contract negotiations session.

The district released an update stating that a tentative agreement was made for teachers to partake in multiple open houses as long as they occur on different evenings.

“It's small progress, but it's a positive sign that the parties are headed in the right direction, at least with respect to that one issue,” said Tom Breth, district solicitor. “There's still a lot of work to be done.”

Teachers union representative Brooke Witt said it is the first tentative agreement the two parties have come to in a year. However, she also said that she spoke with Breth and they had agreed to not publicly disclose the terms of the agreement.

“While progress was made at the session on Monday night, I'm not sure what impact (disclosing the terms) is going to have on how we're going to progress moving forward,” Witt said.

Breth said that he agreed not to post the document containing the tentative agreement, but he never agreed that the board would not post the terms of the tentative agreement.

The district and union have been involved in a contract dispute since the beginning of 2014, when the previous contract expired.

School-day and in-service requirements also were discussed. The union and district tentatively agreed to an eight-period work day, while an agreement on the number of in-service days was not reached.

Wages, health care, post-employment health care and tuition reimbursement were not discussed at Monday's session.

Witt said these issues were not discussed because the union wanted to find common ground on smaller issues before moving to major talking points.

“Our attempt was to kind of break things down to the basics, and focus on things we thought we could try to resolve,” Witt said.

Breth said he is not very hopeful regarding a resolution on these issues.

“The parties are still very far apart on wages, post-employment health care, health care and premium contributions,” Breth said.

“The board believes that the teacher's position on those issues is extremely out of line with the community, and until we see some willingness to compromise on their part regarding those issues it's hard to get too optimistic about the negotiations,” he said.

The union and district will have two more bargaining sessions this month.