Panama City- As the start of next school year quickly approaches, the Bay County School District met Wednesday night with the Association of Bay County Educators to continue hashing out contract details.

Among the several items they tackled, there were three that took up much of the conversation. The first both sides agreed on dealt with $5,000 bonuses for teachers showing certain academic gains at "D" and "F" schools in the county.

"It's certainly a good thing for teachers. It's a good thing for struggling schools," said ABCE Chief Negotiator Cindy Fowler.

"The superintendent strongly supports it," said Bay County School District Chief Negotiator Pat Martin.

But they couldn't come to a consensus on the other two details. One concerned planning periods. ABCE officials said they want to prevent schools from using teachers' planning periods for other purposes. The district didn't agree to that.

"We're in a time of flux and transition and training is critical to the mission," said Martin.

They also couldn't agree on how to govern sick leave days. The school district wants to add guidelines to the contract as to how many and how often teachers take them. ABCE didn't like its approach asking instead for educators with 100 or more accrued sick day to be able to sell five back to the district.

"We don't want to hammer teachers in a year when they already feel overwhelmed. We'd like to reward teachers that are there everyday," said Fowler.

Insurance is also holding them back form moving forward. The district is still waiting to hear back from Florida Blue regarding premiums.

Lasting three hours, the meeting ended without either side signing the dotted line, but they said they're optimistic that will happen in the near future.