It was another hurdle cleared.

Lawrence school board members during a short special meeting Monday night unanimously approved a tentative agreement that was reached last week with teacher-contract negotiators.

“It certainly helps us move forward,” said Kelly Barker, the lead teacher negotiator for the Lawrence Education Association. “We can talk (with teachers) about what the agreement means.”

The tentative agreement includes adding about $1.2 million to the teachers’ annual salary schedule – a 3.28 percent raise from last year.

District negotiators needed approval from board members because the amount of the raise was higher than they were last authorized to agree to. Board members met with several administrators for less than 30 minutes in a closed-door executive session before voting to consider ratifying the agreement at their next meeting, on Sept. 10.

Likely before then, Lawrence teachers will have voted on the agreement as well. Barker said LEA negotiators will spend the coming days organizing informational meetings for teachers so they can ask questions about the negotiated changes to the master agreement.

Teachers will then cast individual votes on the agreement at their own schools, he said.

The salary negotiations had been the most contentious part of the agreement through the summer, as both sides were $1 million apart up until the day they came together on the tentative agreement last week.

But Barker and lead district negotiator Kim Bodensteiner both said the agreement reached was the best one available. Among several other issues, district negotiators did agree to allow teachers to use two more sick-leave days as personal business days.

The proposed salary schedule is based on giving an $850 raise to a salary of $48,850 for a teacher who has earned a master’s degree and 10 more credit hours and has served 14 years or more in the district. The base pay for a first-year teacher who has a bachelor’s degree would be $33,550, which is a $1,075 raise from last year’s scale.