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Our Tentative Agreement

Fairfax Education Unions (FEU) has monumental news to report! Late last night, FEU and Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) reached a tentative agreement that, if ratified, would allow for region-leading employee compensation via salary and step increases, additional educator planning time, more leave, paid time off flexibility for operational unit employees, union rights, and continuation of an eight-hour teacher contract for special education teachers.

Our efforts culminated in a 47-year-long battle for collective bargaining rights that we just won! We negotiated the best deal in our history, which means legally enforceable increases in our wages, leave, and rights, among many other improvements to the status quo. 

We are still working through details in the language and the process of ratification between Fairfax Education Association and the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers that we will share once available. First, we wanted to share with you highlights of the tentative agreement:

Overview

  • This will be a three-year contract, effective on July 1, 2025 (subject to ratification by FEA and FCFT members and funding through local government).
     

  • There are two separate contracts, one representing operational unit employees and another representing instructional unit.

Union Rights

  • This is the first K-12 collective bargaining agreement in Virginia to codify Just Cause protections for discipline and dismissal. Now, discipline must be applied fairly and consistently for all staff.
     

  • We achieved a formalized grievance procedure to ensure that rights afforded to FCPS workers under the contract are enforceable.
     

  • Weingarten Rights: we solidified the right to union representation in meetings pertaining to disciplinary action.

Salary & Wages

  • We secured wage increases across the operational and instructional units, equating to seven percent, in the first year of the contract (2025-26) and three percent market scale adjustments in years two and three.
     

  • We were also able to attain an additional step on every schedule in year two and year three for all eligible employees and an additional step will be added to the top of each salary scale in years two and three. With an additional step, the cumulative average salary or wage will increase to 5.5% in years two and three. 

Leave & Paid Time Off

  • Six additional paid holidays for hourly operational employees in year one.
     

  • Three days of bereavement leave separate from the employee's sick leave bank in year one.

Instructional Specific

  • Extension of the special education extended-day contracts. Special education teachers will continue to be paid for the time it takes to deliver the best services to special education students while completing the additional responsibilities associated with special education.
     

  • We fixed a decade-old problem of not providing 300 minutes of unencumbered planning time per week for elementary educators. Under our agreement, CLT meetings can be used for no more than 60 minutes per week, and planning time cannot be provided in less than 30-minute increments.

Healthcare

  • FEU advocated for FCPS to put the health plan out to bid in January 2025 in response to rising healthcare costs for employees. The process we negotiated ensures that FEU – and FCPS employees  – have a formal role in the evaluation and selection of insurance carriers.

Other Perks

  • We received a commitment to form a committee to reach an agreement on waiving tuition so that FCPS workers who live outside of Fairfax County can enroll their children in FCPS schools.

Next Steps

Please note that you must be a member of FEA or FCFT to vote YES on the tentative agreement. This agreement is subject to ratification by FEA and FCFT members and FCPS and funding through the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. We will follow up soon with more details on the ratification process and the next steps for solidifying our first contract. 

Today we made history! This milestone would not be possible without your hard work. Together we’re going to continue to build a better FCPS for workers and the students we serve. 

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