The Bolinas-Stinson Union School District and its teachers’ union reached a tentative three-year contract agreement last week, ending nearly a year of negotiations and securing pay increases that required concessions from both sides. For months, the parties sparred over whether the small district faces dire financial deficits or has room to spend. The agreement lands between those positions, falling short of the union’s initial demands while keeping district reserves above a required threshold. Under the tentative plan, teachers will receive the equivalent of an 8.25 percent raise over the next two years. The contract also boosts starting salaries for new teachers by $9,000. “We just wanted to keep the district a place that attracts and retains really high-quality educators as other schools negotiate packages that may look more enticing,” said Britton Walker, president of the 12-member Bolinas-Stinson Teachers Association. “We don’t want to lose them, and we want to be able to attract qualified people should we have an opening.” Other provisions of the agreement convert personal necessity and sick leave into “no-tell” days, provided those days are not used to extend school breaks, and shift the grievance process from nonbinding to binding arbitration, in which an independent arbitrator—rather than the school board—makes the final decision in contract disputes. The deal falls short of the 9.5 percent raise the union initially sought. Earlier this winter, teachers rejected a 7.5 percent counteroffer, prompting the state to initiate a fact-finding process to resolve the impasse. The sides reached the new agreement through that process. The deal still must be approved by both the school board and a majority of voting members of the union. Because negotiations stretched well beyond their original timeline, the contract retroactively covers the last school year, the current year and next year—meaning the parties will return to the bargaining table again next year. Throughout negotiations, superintendent Leo Kostelnik warned that the raises teachers sought could push the district of the roughly 120 students toward insolvency. State law requires a rainy-day fund of at least 5 percent of total expenditures to guard against insolvency, and Bolinas-Stinson maintains an additional 5 percent buffer. The district’s annual budget is about $6.8 million. Mr. Kostelnik said the updated multiyear projections show reserves will remain above the 10 percent threshold during the term of the new agreement. “With this agreement, at the level we settled at, my worries about insolvency have been addressed,” he said. “For the district’s part and the board’s part, we are very happy that we were able to negotiate a mutually agreeable settlement, even if it took a long time.”