Negotiations Update, May 24, 2010

Interest based-bargaining is giving us an opportunity to approach and participate in contract negotations in a whole new way. While we've reported before in a "we/they" mode, we will now be referring to the negotiating team as both teacher and board representatives. Together we make a team that is working to come up with ideas that will make our district a better place for teachers, students, parents and adminstrators - all stakeholders. The negotiating team met on May 3 and again on May 19.

On May 3 the team, made up of Linda Schukman, Dennis Dickson, Kay Smith, Betty Sigle, Ginger Riddle, Robin Crim, Michelle Smalls, Amy Sloan, Kevin Gullett, Beth Mattox, Danny Zeck, John Chapman and facilitators Dr. John Heim (KASB) and Wade Anderson (KNEA) set ground rules, an agenda, and discussed which articles were opened and why. We came to a tentative agreement on Article 1 (Duration of Contract - that the negotiated agreement will be in effect from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011) and spent a lot of time making sure everyone was familiar with the background information on various issues.

On May 19, we continued to work without John Chapman and Danny Zeck, since the board decided to let Amy, Kevin and Beth represent them. We finalized the mission statement, which says, "To provide expedient negotiations that results in a fair and equitable agreement and that allows for optimum performance for all certified staff and students," and began working on the article titled "Duty Day." The first issue that came up under Duty Day was parent-teacher conferences. The board has interpreted the current contract language to mean that all conferences across the district must be held over the same time period. As part of this process, all the stakeholders express "interests." These are some of the things that came up as we discussed conferences. They are paraphrased here.

• Parents could potentially have students in multiple buildings, and this makes it difficult for them to attend conferences for all their children if all the evening conferences are on the same night.
• Teachers have found 11 hours to be adequate time to confer with the parents of their students.
• Teachers find it difficult to hold conferences until late in the evening and then teach early the next morning.

We came to a tentative agreement on this issue. Briefly, we plan to hold fall conferences for some schools on Wednesday after a full day of school, and the rest of the schools will hold evening conferences on Thursday. All teachers will hold conferences during the day Thursday. This will make for a long day of conferences for about half the district's teachers, but the order will be reversed for spring conferences, so each teacher will have to hold 11 hours of conferences in a day only one time per year.

In summary, conferences look like this: Wednesday evening, Thursday daytime for about half of the teachers. The other half of the teachers will hold conferences on Thursday day and evening (11 hour day). Then it is switched for the spring conferences. Everyone will still be off on Friday following conferences.

Please know that "tentative agreement" means we've reached an agreement on this issue, but final agreement isn't reached until the entire package is complete, and ratification votes have occurred for the teachers and the board.

Discussion began on the issue of planning time, which for the high school teachers is intricately tied to scheduling.

The next meetings will be at 4 pm on June 2, and 2 pm on June 16. We encourage you to come and observe as we work to change the culture in negotations from one of contention and opposition to one of cooperation and collaboration.