Pittsburgh Public Schools teachers will vote this week on whether to accept a contract that would raise the top-scale pay for a master's degree from $73,500 last school year to $79,800 over three years.

About 850 members of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers met privately yesterday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center where union President John Tarka and other union officials explained the proposal and answered questions for more than 2 1/2 hours.

		More information More details on the tentative agreement are available on the union Web site, www.pft400.org.

"What took place today was a very honest exchange," said Mr. Tarka after the meeting.

The membership -- including about 2,700 teachers, counselors and other professionals -- will vote by a secret mail ballot which must be received by 4 p.m. Friday. The ballots will be counted by ELECTEC Inc. at the union headquarters on the South Side at 4:30 p.m. Friday.

The tentative agreement was announced about 6 a.m. Tuesday after a 20-hour negotiating session, easing fears of a teacher strike. Mr. Tarka declined to comment publicly on how close the district came to a strike, saying he prefers to focus on the contract.

After the meeting, several teachers made largely positive remarks about it.

"I'm happy that we settled. I think we made some progress," said Susan Smith, a teacher at Pittsburgh Phillips. "The district has given and so has the union. So we met at a place there the schools as a whole can advance student achievement."

Lori Sandridge, a physical therapist, said, "I see this as progress. I have something to look forward to every year."

Most city teachers are at top scale and will receive a raise of $2,100 a year each year for three years. The contract is retroactive to the start of this school year.

Some teachers also earn additional money through added duties or long service. A longevity increment for teachers who have taught for more than 22 years will increase by $200 a year, amounting to $2,200 for 10-month employees.

There also is a teacher professional increment of $200 a month after five years at the top step or 14 years of teaching, whichever comes first.

For teachers lower on the pay scale, many would receive smaller dollar increases than those at the top but bigger percentage increases.

Starting pay for a teacher with a bachelor's degree would be $36,030 this school year, growing to $37,120 by the end of the contract.

The biggest increase -- as is true in many teacher contracts -- is at the "bump" step, the step putting a teacher on top scale, in this case the 10th step.

The proposal calls for teachers to gradually be raised to the full 10th step over the course of the year instead of at the start of the year.

This means that a teacher with a master's degree who made $49,300 a year on the ninth step in 2006-07 would move to $62,450 in September 2007 and to the full 10th step of $75,660 in March 2008, thus not being paid at the top rate for the full year. This affects about 150 teachers.

Mr. Tarka said the district had wanted to increase the number of steps to 12.

While Pittsburgh teachers do not have the highest pay scale in the county, they long have viewed their 10-step salary scale -- one of the shortest of any teacher contracts -- as a competitive advantage.

As for health care, the contract maintains the formula for active members, with employees paying about 25 percent of the increase in premiums. Currently, that results in teachers who have a Keystone family policy paying about $1,400 a year, which amounts to about 10 percent of the premium.

The tentative agreement calls for the retirees who participate to pay 50 percent of the increased premiums instead of 25 percent. It also eliminates the $800 a year that the district paid to teachers on Medicare seeking assistance to pay for supplemental health insurance.

For the first time, the proposal extends health insurance coverage to domestic partners.

The proposal also requires teachers to work 10 additional minutes a day.

And it calls for some measures to improve school safety, including a leadership review board of union delegates and school district representatives to see that leadership in schools is effective.

There are different pay scales for professional categories other than K-12 teachers.

Preschool teachers, for example, are paid less. The top step for Level II preschool teachers with a master's degree in the 10th year, for example, will grow from $53,300 in 2006-07 to $54,910 in 2009-10.

The union was unsuccessful in winning limits on class size beyond those already in the contract.

The PFT has not yet reached tentative agreements for the 640 paraprofessionals and the 50 clerical-technical workers. Talks are scheduled for Wednesday and Friday.