The Kalispell teachers union tentatively has agreed not to seek raises in base pay next year, a welcome decision for school officials struggling to balance the district's 2011-12 budget.

Kalispell Education Association and Kalispell Public Schools have reached a tentative agreement in which teachers will take no raises to their base salaries and no increase to benefit contributions, according to a press release from the district.

While their base salaries will remain unchanged, most teachers still would receive raises next year. Teachers automatically earn more money when they add another year's experience or accrue additional post-secondary education.

About 260 teachers will receive those contractual raises, human resources director Karen Glasser said Tuesday. The district can't pin down an exact number; it doesn't know how many teachers might retire or resign by the end of the year.

The district's best estimate is that those automatic raises will cost about $350,000, a figure built into the preliminary 2011-12 general fund budget.

"The teachers are very willing to step up to the plate and help the district address the serious economic problems it is facing," education association President Mike Thiel said in the press release.

Those problems include at least a half-million-dollar shortfall in the district's 2011-12 general fund budget. That projection was based in part on no raises for staff members across the board, except those already promised by contract.

To help the association with the negotiation process, the union polled its members to find out how small a raise people could live with, Thiel said Tuesday. After meeting a few times to go through the data collected in the survey, the association's negotiating team discovered members said they could accept a zero percent raise.

"People who teach are not callous enough ... we're not under-read enough to not realize what's going on right now," Thiel said. "The [zero percent] offer was kind of floated around a little bit outside of negotiations. If we could get that, we would take it."

Thiel said the union has not polled its members since the decision was announced, but he has received some feedback from teachers.

"Of the over 50 e-mails I've received since I sent out the announcement, only two were not totally positive," he said. "That's not scientific, by any stretch of the imagination. It's just those who e-mailed in right away."

Union members will vote later this week to make the offer final. School board trustees still have to vote for the agreement to be official, Thiel said.

"Either party could say no. Then it would be back to square one," he said.

While the agreement isn't yet final, school officials appreciate it.

"This is welcome news for the public schools and for our district," Superintendent Darlene Schottle said in the press release. "We have been struggling to find a way to reduce costs and provide a quality education and service for our community. We commend the people on both sides of the table for working diligently to put this deal together to address the economic reality we face today."

The agreement also will help district officials as they try to put together an accurate budget picture for 2011-12.

"It is nice to have that knowledge at this point in the process," Glasser said. "It helps us with budgeting, definitely."

That budget, which is based on the statewide budget Gov. Brian Schweitzer released in November, projects a minimum $500,000 shortfall in Kalispell schools in 2011-12. The exact deficit is unknown until the state Legislature decides how to fund education over the next biennium.

The district also doesn't yet know what it will negotiate with most of its other unions and associations.

Of Kalispell's seven groups slated for negotiations this spring, two are settled, Glasser said. The district's maintenance staff agreed to take whatever raise the teachers union negotiated.

The district has received requests to open negotiations with the tutors and classified unions, Glasser said.

The agreement with Kalispell Education Association also affects district administrators, who do not have a collective bargaining group but usually accept whatever raise the teachers union agrees to.

"This is the second year in a row that administrators will not get an increase," Glasser said.

While teachers received a 2 percent increase to their base salaries this year, administrators chose not to take raises. That decision, they said at the time, was made to help alleviate the $819,000 shortfall Kalispell schools anticipated in 2010-11.

The only exception was for administrators who completed five years in the district. Those who reach that milestone receive an approximately $5,000 salary bump.

Two high school assistant principals are scheduled to receive that raise next year, Glasser said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.