Denver’s first teachers strike in 25 years will come to an end after a record-setting, all-night bargaining session produced a new compensation deal shortly before dawn Thursday that labor leaders say will help better retain the district’s educators.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association initiated the strike Monday, decrying Denver Public Schools’ incentive-based pay system and seeking better wages and more dependable financial advancement for the city’s career teachers.

The walkout by more than 2,600 educators over the last three days left Denver’s schools short-staffed and preschools classes canceled, with substitutes and district administrators filling in, and complaints from students in local high schools that they were being shown movies, given crosswords and otherwise not doing much learning.

The new deal sees DPS putting forward an additional $23.1 million toward teacher compensation, gives average raises of 11.7 percent next year and establishes a new salary schedule that starts at $45,800 a year and tops out at $100,000 annually.

Both the union and the district hailed the bargain struck early Thursday.

“This is a victory for Denver kids and their parents and our teachers,” said Rob Gould, the union’s lead negotiator. “Educators in Denver Public Schools now have a fair, predictable, transparent salary schedule. We’re happy to get back to work.”

DPS Superintendent Susana Cordova said she was pleased by the “collaborative way we worked together.”

“There was a recognition that we share many areas of agreement, and we worked hard to listen and find common ground on the few areas where we had different perspectives,” she said.

Union negotiators put forth what turned out to be their final proposal at 5:30 a.m. Thursday — DPS’s longest-ever bargaining session had been underway since 10:30 a.m. Wednesday — and district leaders broke for about 25 minutes to review it.

“We really only have one change recommended,” Cordova said upon her return. “We’d like to add a signature line to the proposal.”

Cordova and Henry Roman, the union’s president, sat beside each other as they signed off on the agreement and hugged, drawing applause from the teachers and administrators gathered in the basement of the Denver Central Library just after 6 a.m.

“We are recommending now to our members that we officially end the strike,” Gould said.

Because the negotiations had stretched all night, the union had not called off the strike, now technically in its fourth day. But Cordova said teachers are welcome back in the classroom Thursday.

“If you want to come in, as soon as you can, come in,” she said. “We’d love to have you back in the schools.”

Cordova clarified that teachers who do not report to their classrooms on Thursday will have to take an unpaid day off — as they already have been this week during the strike.

DPS’s preschool programs, however, will remain closed another day.

The agreement still must be ratified by a vote of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association’s full membership, then approved by the Denver Board of Education.

Highlights of the deal, according to union and district officials, include:

An average 11.7 percent increase in base salary next year

A “transparent” 20-step salary schedule that starts at $45,800 a year and tops out at $100,000 for teachers with 20 years experience and a doctorate

Full cost-of-living increases in the second and third years of the agreement

The ability to use professional development units — free in-district courses offered to advance teachers’ education — to move up lanes on the salary schedule

An end to bonuses for senior DPS administrators

An additional $23.1 million in funding for teacher compensation

The deal also included a significant compromise on the contentious issue of educator incentives, with the union accepting the district’s increased $3,000 retention bonus for teachers in the 30 highest-priority schools — if a collaborative research study is conducted to determine whether the much-debated incentives work to retain Denver’s quality teachers.

“We are thankful that both sides were able to come together after 15 months of bargaining to ensure our educators have a transparent salary schedule with a professional base salary scale and less reliance on unpredictable bonuses that disrupt our schools,” Roman said in a statement.”

The annual incentives agreed upon include:

A $750 bonus for teachers in 10 distinguished schools

$2,000 incentives for hard-to-staff positions and teachers working at Title I schools

The $3,000 incentive for educators in the 30 highest-priority schools

A $1,000 of tuition reimbursement, maxing out at $6,000 over a career

Cordova called the proposal a strong investment in both teacher base pay and incentives.

Sleeping on the floor

While many teachers called it a night after the session hit the midnight mark, the room had been packed the previous day as educators awaited their fate.

During a particularly long lull waiting for both parties to come back to the table in the downtown library basement, 72-year-old DPS math teacher Kathleen Braun curled up on the floor under her seat for a quick power nap.

The more-than-19-hour bargaining session was the longest DPS negotiation on record.

The exhaustion of never-ending bargaining sessions, picketing and worrying about students was nothing new for Braun, who has now endured three DPS strikes in her lifetime — in 1969, 1994 and this week.

Braun said she didn’t strike for herself.

“I would make less than $200 at this point out of these deals,” Braun said, with the imprint of her jacket zipper still visible on her face from her snooze. “This is for the next generation of teachers and those thinking of becoming teachers. One day, they will replace me, and I won’t be sleeping on the floor of bargaining sessions anymore.”

Gov. Jared Polis, who had declined to intervene ahead of the strike, praised the deal struck by DPS and the teachers union on Thursday.

“Denver’s kids are the biggest winners in today’s agreement,” he said in a statement, “and I think everyone is relieved that the strike is over and students and teachers will be back in school working together to build a brighter future for themselves and our community.”

More than 2,600 Denver educators have hit the streets this week, along with supporters and some of their students, in the name of fair wages.

The issue at the core of the pay dispute, and 15 months of failed negotiations, is a compensation system called ProComp with a complicated history dating back to the 1990s.

Denver’s teachers union has been looking to secure the district’s educators better and more reliable pay increases — rather than the bonuses at the heart of DPS’s incentive-based ProComp system — as those teachers advance through their careers.

The district wanted to ensure any system was financially sustainable in the future.

Even prior to this week’s resumption of bargaining, the two sides had reached a point where they both proposed the same starting base salary for teachers: $45,800 a year. But other areas of contention remained, namely the DPS reliance on bonuses tied to working in high-poverty schools or student achievement.

Negotiations heat up

As the Jan. 18 expiration of the ProComp contract grew closer, bargaining sessions between Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association heated up, with some ending in tears and squabbles, with representatives of both sides exhausted and frustrated.

The union voted on Jan. 22 to authorize a strike after its negotiations with DPS failed to secure a new contract governing educator compensation through the ProComp system. At the time, the two sides were about $8 million apart in their respective compensation proposals.

Once the union authorized a strike, DPS officials formally asked Polis to intervene, a move that delayed any strike until the state government weighed its options. The governor ultimately declined to step in — something that could have further delayed a strike by up to 180 days.

After Polis made his decision last week, union officials declared they’d strike on Monday, setting the stage for a final burst of bargaining. Representatives of DPS and the teachers met on Friday night and much of Saturday afternoon.

Saturday’s 11th-hour bargaining session grew increasingly contentious as union representatives rejected a new DPS proposal that would cut 150 central office jobs in an effort to free up $20 million to help with teacher pay. But it also increased incentives to teachers working in high-poverty schools, which has been a sticking point with the union.

The union representatives walked out on DPS negotiators Saturday night, announcing they would not meet with the district against until Tuesday — and that the strike would begin Monday.

The district and union returned to the bargaining table on Tuesday following a day of picketing and student walkouts in support of their teachers. The two sides met for more than 12 hours at the Denver Central Library, trading proposals and meeting in private to go over them.

Following Tuesday night’s session, Cordova expressed optimism, saying, “We can certainly see a pathway forward.”

Cordova and Henry Roman, the union’s president, followed up with a joint statement saying the two sides had “worked in good faith to find common ground.”

“We exchanged proposals that are moving us closer and are hopeful that we will get to an agreement soon,” they said. “However, we need a little more time to resolve the outstanding issues.”

Wednesday’s negotiation session hit the ground running with the district responding to the union’s late Tuesday proposal. As DPS unveiled its latest plan, teachers in the audience — who normally chant protest songs during breaks and occasionally heckle the district during bargaining talks — clapped and snapped their fingers in approval.

The union said it didn’t have questions about the district’s proposal, which came closer to the union in ways educators were able to move across their pay scale and earn professional development credits that could contribute toward their salary.