An expiring teacher contract — and even the possibility of an eventual strike — has cast a pall of uncertainty around the start of the school year at Dallas.
The Dallas Education Association, the union which represents teachers at the Dallas School District, voted Monday to authorize a strike amidst what appear to be increasingly fraught contract negotiations, a representative said. The first day of school for students is Tuesday and the teachers’ contract expires next Monday.
Mark McDade, a Dallas Education Association labor representative, confirmed the strike authorization, describing the vote on the matter as “all but unanimous.” He stressed, however, that a strike was not imminent, with the union having “no intention of setting a strike date at this time.”
Dallas Superintendent Thomas Duffy did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
The vote Monday comes as contract talks have lingered in Dallas for months.
McDade said the teachers union has made a generous proposal. He said the offer would keep wages lower than the level for which Dallas has budgeted this school year and that the union made concessions around healthcare, changing networks and altering policy so as to save the district at least $350,000 annually.
That proposal, McDade said, was rejected.
“We were very confident that that would be received well,” McDade said of the proposal. “Unfortunately, the board didn’t agree to those. So, it didn’t go well.”
McDade said the teachers have asked for certain guaranteed limits on classroom sizes in exchange for concessions on wages and healthcare. He said faculty attrition, the practice of not hiring to replace teachers who resign or retire in an effort to save money, was poised to increase student-to-teacher ratios – something he called “not acceptable.”
“In return, what we want is safeguards on quality education,” McDade said. “The teachers deeply care about the quality of instruction that they can deliver.”
This labor strife comes as Dallas faces daunting financial straits. Dallas is budgeted to start the 2026-27 school year with a negative fund balance of $5.5 million and end the year still at negative $5.46 million. (There have been extensive delays in the completion of Dallas’ audit for the 2024-25 school year and district officials have cautioned in past discussions about its finances that they were not yet able to fully ascertain its true fund balance.) Due to Dallas’ deep fund balance deficit, Moody’s downgraded the district’s credit rating last school year, dropping from what had been an A3 rating in the fiscal year 2024 to Ba2 — a “not prime” rating that indicates obligations have “speculative elements and are subject to substantial credit risk.”
In a financial presentation delivered to the school board earlier this year, Dallas Business Manager Lyndsey Dalton attributed the depletion of the district’s fund balance to an extraordinary, 73.87% rise in healthcare expenses over the last five years, with total healthcare costs having been set to eclipse $7 million in the 2025-26 school year. The Dallas school board’s decision to freeze taxes from the 2019-20 to the 2023-24 school year, Dalton added, meant these costs far outstripped revenue.
In an attempt to bridge its deficit, the Dallas school board has increased property taxes each of the last three years, raising them a cumulative 13.34%. Votes on these tax hikes have been narrow, with the idea of collecting more from homeowners proving divisive for the school board. This year, the school board nearly missed its May 31 deadline under state law as members struggled to agree on a final tax rate.
McDade said Monday that school districts across the Wyoming Valley and throughout the commonwealth have also been struggling with rapidly rising healthcare costs. He said the fact that Dallas, as a relatively affluent school district, was facing unique challenges was evidence of poor financial stewardship.
“It’s self inflicted, it’s a completely self-inflicted situation. It’s fiscal mismanagement,” McDade said of Dallas’ financial struggles. “They should not be in this type of situation whatsoever. It comes down to just poor decision making.”
McDade said the teachers have specifically taken issue with Dallas’ deferment of debt-service payments.
In March, Dalton said the district had refinanced its bond debt, deferring payments from this past school year to the next. Dallas’ budgeted costs related to debt-service and other expenditures and financing uses have increased from just $150,000 in its 2025-26 budget to $9.98 million in 2026-27.
McDade criticized the district’s approach to deferring payments. He referred to one deferral decision as a “scoop and toss,” which he said created an additional $750,000 in interest payments alone.
“That really upset the teachers, because that was just fiscally irresponsible,” McDade said. “Because of fiscal irresponsibility, they weren’t minding the store. So, they’ve created a really difficult financial situation and made it worse.”
McDade said that the school board had communicated to Dallas teachers that it had already delivered to them its “best and final offer.” He said no future negotiating dates are currently scheduled.