D.C. public schoolteachers would get a raise and more planning time as part of a tentative agreement with the city on a new five-year union contract.

The tentative agreement, which both the Washington Teachers’ Union and Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Monday night, comes after over a year of negotiations. It still has to be ratified by the union’s members.

The union’s last contract took over three years, and the one that preceded it took about five, WTU president Jacqueline Pogue-Lyons said. She called the fact the most recent agreement took only about a year “something to celebrate.”

The contract includes a raise for the union’s members, but Pogue-Lyons didn’t elaborate on the structure, because members haven’t yet had a chance to review the terms of the agreement, she said. But many other protections are tied to working conditions for teachers, which Pogue-Lyons said are essential to attracting and retaining educators.

“There’s so much competition to get great and knowledgeable people,” Pogue Lyons said. “So we want to get them, but we also want to keep them. We don’t want a revolving door, because we feel the longer we keep our teachers, the better they become as educators.”

She added that the deal includes a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on achieving and keeping diversity in schools and an MOA on climate, which is tied to ensuring classrooms have enough ventilation and that air quality is good.

The agreement has details on controlling class size and will enable teachers to keep their vision and dental insurance, which they feared they might lose. It features more planning time, Pogue Lyons said, and the assurance that special education and other teachers won’t be pulled out of their classrooms to perform other duties.

“When those things happen, we’re not able to meet the needs of the students that were tasked to teach, especially our most vulnerable population,” Pogue Lyons said.

In a joint statement, Pogue-Lyons, Bowser and Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said the agreement “shows what can be achieved when we work together with a common goal of putting students first. With this agreement, we are reaffirming our commitment to investing in our young people and making D.C. the number one city for teachers.”

Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

© 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

WASHINGTON – The STEER Act, a D.C. law aimed at road safety passed earlier this year, had components go into effect on October 1. 

Among some of the changes: it’ll create the opportunity to add speed restrictions to vehicles for drivers who violate D.C. traffic laws. It’ll also ensure that if someone has their car stolen and the plate racks up tickets, that victim won’t have to pay the fines.

But the biggest change the STEER Act creates: going after out-of-state drivers who rack up huge fines.

If a traffic camera catches a D.C. resident, that person must pay the fine to renew their registration in the District.

But out-of-state drivers don’t have to pay their D.C. fine to renew wherever they live.

The impact of this: some out-of-state drivers aren’t as cautious driving around D-C.

According to data provided by the Department of Public Works, the overwhelming majority of out-of-state plates getting citations in the District are in Maryland and Virginia.

In Fiscal Year 2022, those plates got 757,268 citations totaling $151,250,000 in unpaid fines. In 2023, 808,933 citations totaling $160,700,000 in unpaid fines.

D.C. resident Katherine Eyster tells FOX 5 she thinks this is a fairness and safety issue: It’s unfair that D.C. residents have to pay, and she sees out-of-state drivers who aren’t careful on D.C. streets.

“It’s certainly tough to say, but when you look at the numbers and that some of these drivers, we’re not talking about folks who are distracted here and there, we’re talking about folks who are dangerous and shouldn’t be on the road. And so, hopefully that makes a difference,” Eyster said.           

This new law now allows the D.C. Attorney General’s Office to sue these out-of-state plate owners in D.C. Court, get a judgment, then try and enforce that judgment in the state where the plate owner is registered.

Council Member Charles Allen heads the Council’s Transportation Committee. He says this bill adds teeth to D.C.’s traffic enforcement.

“It’s important, I think, to send that strong signal that the Attorney General is going to be coming after you, that we are going to make sure we put teeth into that reckless driving and making sure we get those drivers, hold them accountable, and get them off our streets,” Allen said.

FOX 5 has learned the Attorney General’s Office will add two attorneys whose full-time jobs will be filing these suits in D.C. to secure these judgments.

That sounds like a small number given the number of unpaid citations, but Allen thinks this will be a key deterrent and important tool.

“I think we will see a significant impact and I think it will result in safer streets. Let’s not kid ourselves that one law is going to magically change it all, you have to have better engineering, you have to build safer streets and intersections, we have to help educate drivers to make sure they’re learning and driving more safely. But we have to have enforcement, and this legislation, this law, is going to help improve enforcement,” Allen said.

District Dogs will pay $100,000 to D.C. and make improvements to safety and emergency response, after a 2023 flood left 10 dogs dead.

Under a settlement reached with D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General, District Dogs must keep the store at 680 Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast permanently closed. That location flooded three times in 2022 — before the 2023 flood.

In an August 2023 interview with NBC Washington, District Dogs owner Jacob Hensley said that location was “officially closed. Forever.”

In the settlement, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said District Dogs misled customers about the safety of their dogs and “downplayed the flooding and mentioned specific measures that District Dogs was taking to prevent future flooding issues, representing to Consumers that dogs would be safe in District Dogs’ care.”

D.C. alleged District Dogs misrepresented that each dog in its care would enjoy a safe and healthy experience, told customers flood prevention measures were sufficient to keep dogs safe, and failed to implement adequate training, emergency and evacuation procedures.

The settlement said “District Dogs denies all of OAG’s allegations and claims, including that it has violated any consumer protection laws.”

In a statement provided to WTOP, a spokesperson for District Dogs said: “To bring this matter to an end, and to avoid the continued financial strain on our small business from an unnecessarily prolonged process, we agreed to settle this matter with one important condition – that the Attorney General’s Office agree as part of the settlement that there is no admission of wrongdoing by District Dogs whatsoever.”

On Aug. 14, 2023, 10 dogs died inside the pet day care and grooming facility following a torrential downpour. Water rose nearly six feet in the span of a few minutes, to the middle of doors on District Dogs, before one of the walls gave out, according to D.C. Fire and EMS supervisors on the scene.

As part of the settlement, District Dogs will be required to obtain risk management certification for its locations, to include emergency response and evacuations specific to each facility.

Some of the procedures include designating evacuation route assignments, rescue and medical duties, a clear checklist of sequential steps, as well as a system to account for each dog on site during emergencies. In addition, an alarm system would notify employees of an emergency situation.

Separately, in May 2024, eight families whose dogs drowned at the District Dogs filed a negligence suit against Hensley.

According to the suit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, the dogs’ deaths were foreseeable and preventable, since the District Dogs location at 680 Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast had flooded repeatedly, including almost exactly one year before the 2023 flood.

Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

© 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.