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.

Culture and Climate Survey Results

The results of the culture and climate survey are now available by clicking here. You may have noticed when you took the survey that some of the questions did not seem to be designed for our district and our situation. We used a tool provided by KNEA's Wade Anderson for the survey so as to avoid allowing any of our own biases to enter into the question-writing. That means that interpreting the results can only be done with both a knowledge of the district/building and an open mind!

The district administration is interested in working with LNEA to use these results to improve the educational experience for our students. We would appreciate your suggestions! As you look through the results, what do YOU think should be our priorities? Please email us at lneanews@gmail.com!

Questions about your evaluation?

A number of faculty members have expressed concerns about their most recent evaluation to LNEA teachers' rights' representatives. I had the opportunity to attend a training by Sue Pressler, whom I understand has also trained district and building administrators, and I would like to share some of the information I gleaned from that session. If you were there, please feel free to add your comments!

Just as we design rubrics when we want kids to know what quality work looks like, the rubrics of "Framework for Teaching" (FFT) are designed to show us what quality teaching looks like and aid administrators in discussing our work with us.

Ratings of "basic" are not "bad" ratings. There's nothing wrong (according to the trainer) with being in the basic category. Furthermore, if your teaching assignment or the curriculum changes, you can expect to go back to basic. A 30-yr veteran should have exemplaries but NOT necessarily in everything. Ratings that are "exemplary" across the board should mean you are not only very experienced and accomplished at teaching what you're teaching, but also practically a candidate for canonization!

The professional appraisal system is designed to focus on teacher growth by emphasizing reflection on our teaching and by encouraging discussion among teachers and their supervisors about what constitutes good teaching. Our professional development and PLC or other collaborative work should be intricately meshed with the evaluation process. Evaluation should not feel like a "hoop" that we must jump through, but a natural part of the improvement process--and we all have room to improve.

The LNEA members who participated in the development of the evaluation system were striving to ensure that it met the quality standards described by KNEA at http://www.knea.org/profession/qualitystandards.html. The evaluation system is part of the negotiated agreement, so we would like to hear your suggestions about how to strengthen it and ensure that it is put into practice in a manner that helps teachers improve.

If you are interested in this topic, here are two related resources that you may want to review:

"Improving Student Learning Requires District Learning," by Robert Rothman in Kappan, September 2009, pp 44-50.

"Creating Strong Evaluation Systems," by Peg Dunlap in KNEA Issues, October 2009, pp 4-5.

Ginger Riddle

Collaboration and Negotiations

Greetings! LNEA has entered into a commitment to collaboration with district leadership. Board members, central office staff and LNEA leadership are committed to finding the best possible way to work together toward the common goal of school improvement. Dr. Harris, in her statement regarding the leadership qualities we are looking for in our administration, has said, “It is important to me that our building leaders can build relationships with our staff and students and that their main mission is to help teachers and students grow. We want to build a family and create a culture where our staff and students feel valued. We want our teachers to feel that our leaders are here to help them grow instructionally to improve student achievement.” And, she has asked for further input from staff regarding specific leadership qualities. Additionally, LNEA leadership and Dr. Harris have signed a document, “Commitment to Collaboration,” that states: “We believe the most effective way to improve student achievement in USD #453 is through collaborative efforts. Positive leadership at all levels in the district minimizes conflict and fosters collaboration which in turn improves student achievement and the general health of our district. We wish to collaboratively pursue creative ways to address empowerment and improvement of staff, especially training in collaborative decision making through Partners in Collaboration – Kansas (PICK), a support for interest-based bargaining.” In addition to committing to collaboration in this formal way, the school board recently voted to endorse this training. We see a firm commitment from board members to support interest-based bargaining this spring. We are looking forward to the training in this method of bargaining, which will take place at the board office on Saturday, March 6. We believe this training will allow us to approach negotiations in a collaborative, rather than a potentially divisive, positional posture.

Negotiations: Notice letters for negotiations were exchanged on February 1, as required by law. LNEA opened 4 articles: Duration, Salary, Fringe Benefits, and School Calendar. The board opened 6 articles. In addition to the opening Duration, Salary and School Calendar, they also opened Duty Day and Vertical and Lateral Movement. Obviously both teams feel the need to concentrate on financial issues this year. Please know that we will do our best to secure the most beneficial working conditions and financial situation possible, and we are confident that interest-based bargaining is the best way of achieving this.