Pioneer Regional Schools (PRSC) received the attached memo from the Indiana
Department of Education (IDOE) that we did not meet the funding floor requirement for
the 2024-2025 school year. However, this is not a valid assessment of the 2024-2025
school year. This assessment should not count against PRSC's due to an IEERB stay on
Bargaining that was issued last year for PRSC on September 3, 2024 and lasted the entire
school year.
We had a group of teachers petition to IEERB to take over as the Exclusive
Representative for Pioneer. Due to that request, IEERB issued a stay on all Bargaining
activities on Sept. 3, 2024. That issue was not resolved and the stay on Bargaining was
not lifted until June 3, 2025. We were not allowed to begin formal bargaining for the
2024-2025 school year until June 14, 2025 and had to be finished by August 14,
2025. We did reach a settlement with our Exclusive Representative before the August
14th deadline. Due to that Stay on Bargaining, we had to continue paying our teachers
the status quo contract amount from the 2023-2024 contract for the 2024-2025 school
year. The teachers received a retroactive check in August for the settlement amount once
we were able to Bargain and come to an agreement. Each teacher received a $1,000 on
their base for increment step and an additional contribution towards insurance. So,
otherwise, we would have been above this funding floor requirement for the 2024-2025
school year. This can be verified with IEERB.
Because state statue does not allow an appeal process for Funding Floor violations, the
IDOE recommended that PRSC post this explanation on our website with their memo.
