Anoka-Hennepin educators voting on strike after negotiations fail

The Anoka-Hennepin teachers union are voting this week on whether to authorize a potential strike, escalating a monthslong contract dispute over pay and rising health insurance costs.

The vote, held Wednesday through Saturday, comes after months of negotiations have failed to reach a settlement. The district is the largest in the state and serves about 38,000 students in the northern Twin Cities suburbs.

The negotiation process began in July and has included eight meetings, including three with mediation. Union leaders list salary and benefits as the biggest unresolved issues. Premiums for the district’s self-insured health plan rose 22% this spring, said John Wolhaupter, president of the Anoka-Hennepin teachers union.

“We’re trying to find a way to make sure that the teachers of this district are not being asked to take home less pay over the next two years than they did last year,” Wolhaupter said.

According to Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, more than half (178 of 327) of school districts in Minnesota have settled their two-year contracts with their educators as of Dec. 16. That pace of reaching agreements tracks with the average timeline over the last decade, although the 2023-2025 cycle of negotiations was unusually slow.

Last month, Minneapolis Public Schools and the teachers union reached a tentative contract agreement after seven months of negotiations, just days before a planned strike. That agreement included a 2% pay raise for teachers.

The average salary increase for this negotiation cycle across the state is 2.3% in 2025-26 and 2.3% in 2026-27, according to Education Minnesota.

Monica Byron, the president of Education Minnesota, said administrators and union leaders across the state are trying to negotiate amid rapidly rising health care costs. That sometimes means weighing “adequate health care to educators” with larger class sizes or cuts to programs, she said.

“This bargaining cycle is revealing an uncomfortable truth: Minnesota schools can send their revenue increases to the giant health care corporations — or spend them on improving outcomes for their students and reducing burnout of their educators,” Byron said in a statement. “For most districts, there isn’t enough money to do both.”

In Anoka-Hennepin, even if the majority of members vote to approve a strike, that does not automatically trigger a walkout.

Ballots will be counted on Saturday, with results expected later that day. Any decision to file a formal intent to strike would likely come next week, after the union’s executive board reviews the outcome, Wolhaupter said. Filing that intent starts a 10-day “cooling-off” period, so a walkout wouldn’t occur until January. School is back in session after winter break on Jan. 5.

In a statement, Anoka-Hennepin district leaders said the district is “committed to finding solutions” and reaching an agreement while managing budget constraints.

“Ensuring financial and operational stability for the district is a priority,” leaders said in a statement, which also mentioned recent district cuts to close a more than $21 million budget gap.

Union leaders said teachers feel they are having to sacrifice to help the district balance its books.

“It’s really frustrating to feel like we’re being treated differently than other district employees,” Wolhaupter said. “We’re basically being asked to fix the district’s financials.”

The last time Anoka-Hennepin teachers held a strike authorization vote was in 2002. The last strike occurred in the early 1980s, Wolhaupter said.

“These are all things that we don’t do lightly,” he said. “This is not where we want to be, but this is not just for this contract — every contract that follows builds upon it.”

Competitive pay and benefits are critical to retaining teachers and maintaining stability in classrooms, he said. Despite the disagreements on pay and benefits, the union and the district have reached tentative agreements on several issues, including raising pay for preschool teachers, who will now be included in the broader teachers’ contract, Wolhaupter said.

Tentative agreements have also been reached on additional compensation for some special education teachers, though all agreements remain subject to final ratification.

Wolhaupter said the union hopes to avoid a strike.

“We really believe there is a path where the district is financially stable and teachers are also taken care of at the same time,” he said.

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