STLPR0%
Cahokia school district and teachers union reach tentative agreement 45%
By Madison Lammert0% Will Bauer0%
6/3/2026, 8:21:04 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 29 faulty reasoning types, including Quote-first Misdirection, Confirmation Bias, and Framing Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 34.3% saturation with 249 hits. Analysis detected 1,389 faulty-reasoning hits from 727 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 47.9% and a BS Rank of 45% (11,651 of 21,173 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 55.00% of the article peer group.
After going without a contract for an entire school year, the Cahokia Federation of Teachers and the school district have reached a tentative agreement.
Cahokia School District 187 and the union, which represents teachers, service employees and secretaries, reached a four-year deal Tuesday night, according to Ray Roskos, the field service director at the Illinois Federation of Teachers, who’s been assisting with negotiations.
The tentative deal, which still needs to be ratified by the union’s full membership at the end of this month and the school board, comes amid the union’s allegations of financial mismanagement and corruption against district leadership.
“This tentative contract demonstrates our mutual dedication to supporting the professionals who play a vital role in the success of our schools and the well-being of our students,” Superintendent Curtis McCall Jr. said in a statement.
“The contract provides employees with competitive pay and will help the district recruit and retain qualified teachers and education support personnel, while preserving the district’s excellent financial standing.”
McCall did not respond to requests for further comment.
It’s expected that the union will vote June 24, Roskos said.
Typically, the school board will vote after the union.
The deal came together after the first meeting with a federal mediator Tuesday night that lasted four hours.
The mediator was enlisted after many attempts at the bargaining table had not produced a compromise throughout the year.
“We really took the process seriously,” Roskos said.
“We ultimately made some really, really tough decisions, as far as my team goes.
You know, it's difficult, but it was that process that led us to an agreement.
I didn't think we'd get there (in one meeting), but we did.”
According to Roskos and Cahokia Federation of Teachers Local 1272 President Wendy Lochmann, the agreement increases the baseline salary on the union pay scale by 5%, which doesn’t mean everyone will receive a full 5% raise.
It includes an additional $1,000 for employees’ medical insurance plans.
It also includes clauses requiring teachers to produce lesson plans.
The deal does not include language preventing administrators from raising salaries at greater rates than what is offered to union members or language dictating how teachers change positions internally.
It does not say employees need to submit confirmation from a medical care provider that they were ill and unable to work.
This was a controversial policy that the administration rolled out in the fall and tried to enshrine in the new contract.
Lochmann, who is also an English teacher at the high school, worries the provisions in the tentative agreement may not be enough to retain her colleagues.
The district has long struggled to attract and retain teachers, and permanent substitutes are now commonplace, Lochmann said.
She added that, in just one month, a handful of seasoned teachers resigned or retired early.
“For me, that is just heartbreaking because you can’t just replace all these people quickly,” Lochmann said.
“You can’t replace that experience if you don’t show people they matter.”
Union workers allege corruption amid tense negations
Union employees have been working without a contract since last summer.
Negotiations between the district and union last fall had not been fruitful.
Tensions boiled over in the spring semester.
The union alleged that, for years, multiple employees were being paid without evidence of working and the assistant superintendent was paid far above his contracted salary.
The union also claimed the district paid for an employee’s supplemental Medicare coverage without what it considers proper documentation.
McCall has consistently said the union’s allegations were false and said in February that “nothing illegal has transpired in this district.”
“Clearly, at this point, everyone can see that these contract negotiations are no longer about the union employees you are charged with representing or our students’ best interests, but about your personal and political agendas,” McCall wrote in a March email to district employees.
Even though the union and district reached a tentative compromise this week, Roskos and Lochmann said that doesn’t change any of the allegations they’ve made previously.
“Local 1272 is committed to doing what's right for the taxpayers, for the students and for our members that we represent,” Roskos said.
“We will continue to expose corruption to hold this administration and this school board accountable until they start doing the right thing — monetarily and politically.”
Speakers
3speakers47%attributed speech385writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageCurtis McCall Jr.
108 attributed words32% of attributed speech92% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.