Teacher Contract Preliminaries Go Behind Closed Doors

By Eliza Hallabeck

The Board of Education spend some time behind closed doors July 14, as four board members convened an executive session at the end of its special meeting that evening (see separate story) to discuss Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson’s evaluation. When it finished that session, it adjourned to a “nonmeeting” to discuss the ground rules meeting for the teacher contract negotiations held earlier in the day.

The school board had planned, according to the revised agenda for the night, to discuss the negotiation strategies, but before entering executive session school board Chair Elaine McClure said the negotiation strategies had to be discussed in a “nonmeeting” per state statutes.

Board of Finance Chairman John Kortze learned about the school board’s action, or lack of action, regarding negotiation strategy, the makeup of the negotiating team and other observers following the school board’s special meeting on Tuesday. He criticized Ms McClure for keeping the process out of the public eye.

Speaking about the standing decision to only have herself and fellow board member David Nanavaty on the district’s negotiating team, Mr Kortze wondered, “How are two people on an elected board being allowed to handle all this business in private?”

Saying the upcoming negotiations would likely yield the single most costly labor contract in town history, Mr Kortze registered his dissatisfaction over Ms McClure’s and Mr Nanavaty’s actions in a meeting recently to hear input from Legislative Council and finance board officials leading up to the negotiations.

“If Elaine is not going to call a meeting with the full school board to discuss the council and finance boards’ input from our tri-board meeting as she promised, then how will they be able to apply the input we provided?” he asked. “She never bothered to have any discussion on the negotiating strategy and our input with her full board. The public voted them onto the board and now the public is being excluded. Someone needs to call her on this — she is subverting the democratic process.”

In response to Mr Kortze’s statements, Ms McClure said by phone on Wednesday, July 15, that all active members of the school board were involved in the tri-board meeting, and the input from the other boards was heard and appreciated.

Ms McClure added that the issues involved in the negotiations will be discussed with the entire school board through “nonmeetings,” and the two participating observers, one from the Board of Finance and one from the Legislative Council, will return to their boards with the information.

“They will be [at the negotiation caucuses] to provide constant information,” said Ms McClure, “and they will be able to discuss that with their own boards.”

“There’s probably some limitation on what they can share,” she continued, “but I’m not an expert on that.”

In the past, this has been the process of the teachers contract negotiations, Ms McClure said.

During the ground rules meeting for the negotiation caucuses, Ms McClure said the number of possible observers was discussed, but it was not discussed with the board members during the “nonmeeting” held Tuesday night.

“We did not discuss it as a board,” she said. “We relayed what was discussed at the ground rules meeting.”