TREVOR — The Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated School District has ratified its first teachers’ contract last week since the two districts joined, finally melding the two different contracts into one.

“It took nearly two years to negotiate,” District Administrator George Steffen said of the 2007-09 contract. “In a few months time, we’ll have to start the 2009-11 contract negotiations.”

Steffen said the contracts from the two schools were different in many ways. There was a different number of work days and different sick leave policies, for example. Just as difficult as creating a unified contract was administering the district under two separate contracts, he said.

In 2006-07, Trevor’s base salary was $31,077 and Wilmot’s was $30,605. Under the new contract the base salary increased to $32,009 for the 2007-08 school year and to $33,610 for 2008-09.

In 2006-07, Trevor’s top of scale was $58,213 and Wilmot’s was $57,443. Under the new contract, the top salary increased to $59,959 for the 2007-08 school year and to $62,957 for 2008-09.

The total increase in salary and benefits for 2007-08 is 4.96 percent, of which 3.24 percent represents the increase in salary and 1.71 percent represents the increase in benefits. The total increase in 2008-09 is 5.17 percent, of which 4.27 percent represents the salary increase and 0.90 percent represents benefits.

There are 10 salary steps on the new schedule based on teaching experience and 13 salary lanes based on a teacher’s education level. Teacher salaries fall throughout this schedule. Teachers received their retroactive pay based on the new contract two weeks ago.

“We basically rewrote every section of the contract,” Steffen said, adding a tentative agreement on the salary and benefits portion of the contract was reached “quite awhile ago.”

Savings on benefits were realized in the second year of the contract by changing to a different program offered through Wisconsin Educators Trust, Steffen said.