Lindbergh teacher negotiations unresolved at school board meeting
At least two district affiliates of the Missouri National Education Association are suing their school districts. At issue is how strong unions should be — a question currently echoed in national politics. This article illustrates the Lindbergh School District’s negotiation process, resumed after it derailed in early spring.
By Audrey Spalding
Show-Me Institute
The Lindbergh Board of Education met Tuesday night to discuss, among other things, how to negotiate with its teacher union, the Lindbergh National Education Association (LNEA). During the hour-long public portion of the board’s meeting, board members did not discuss the issue.
For a few minutes, Assistant Superintendent Richard Francis presented the not-yet-contractual changes that LNEA representatives and district administrators had informally agreed upon.
“Negotiations were extremely cordial, and yielded many good handbook revisions,” Francis said.
Beth Siegfried, a co-president of the LNEA, attended the board meeting, though she did not speak during the public comment session.
“I’m fine with what they discussed,” she said.
The real board discussion likely happened either during the two-hour-long closed executive session held by the board before the public meeting, or during the other executive session held after the public meeting, which was described in the board’s agenda as: “concerning legal matters; hiring, firing, promotion, discipline of personnel; lease, purchase, sale of real estate; scholastic probation, expulsion, graduation of student personnel; or preparations for negotiations with employee groups.”
“I’m sure there was discussion in the executive session,” Siegfried said.
Though the school board’s discussion of teacher union negotiations may be held privately, actual negotiations between administrators and LNEA members during the first and second weeks of July were open for observation. Generally, negotiations went well, though they hadn’t earlier in the year.
As the only outside observer, general responses to the presence of a writer covering these negotiations became a standard line: “You should have been here earlier.”
Earlier, of course, the LNEA and district administrators met 16 times for negotiations and could not come to an agreement. At the time, reports about Lindbergh from The Call, South County Times, and St. Louis Suburban Journal featured accounts of protesting teachers and packed school board meetings.
March 1, the deadline for the groups to reach a bargaining agreement, passed, as did April, May, and June. On June 30, the 2006–09 contract expired, and Lindbergh teachers are now working without a binding agreement — until the LNEA and administrators can reach a consensus.
The LNEA-board disagreement hinged on a recent Missouri Supreme Court ruling that public school teachers have a right to bargain collectively. The Missouri National Education Association (MNEA) and many of its district affiliates have interpreted that ruling to mean that only one union ought to represent teachers, and that teachers’ collective bargaining agreements can be expanded to include policies previously left to school board discretion.
The second half of that interpretation is what stalled the Lindbergh negotiations — the LNEA said that the teachers’ bargaining contract should now include details of how teachers are evaluated, teaching schedules, and how the school district conducts layoffs in fiscal grievance resolution, among other practices.
District administrators didn’t budge. According to the LNEA’s website postings, and accounts from Francis and board Vice President and Missouri School Boards Association Vice President Vic Lenz, administrators would not add what had previously been board policy into binding contract language.
Finally, the president and vice president of the school board, along with the superintendent and co-presidents of the LNEA, met to stop the adversarial negotiations and simply have a discussion, Lenz said.
As a result, the LNEA and district administrators agreed to put the disagreement behind them, and meet again in July. The group met over the course of four days, for nine hours total.
The first and second days went well, but negotiations stalled on the third day. Within the first few minutes of the July 8 negotiations, Diane O’Leary, one of LNEA’s two co-presidents, and Francis found themselves at an impasse concerning the earlier debated issue — whether district administrators would consider expanding the teachers’ contract.
The room fell silent. “We have done great work,” Francis said. “But it’s handbook.”
“Which can be changed if [school board members] want to … That’s the concern,” O’Leary said.
The groups parted for an hour to figure out separately whether to continue negotiations, and how unyielding of a stance to take.
Ultimately, both sides agreed to return to the table if there was a possibility that the informal negotiations could lead to binding contract language later, with mutual consent.
Tuesday, the school board had its “first reading” of the changes discussed, but they were not presented as binding. Those changes are open to comment from board members and district employees, Francis said, until the next board meeting on Aug. 18.
It is likely that LNEA members won’t be satisfied until a binding agreement is reached. During negotiations, Francis suggested that because the groups were cooperating, union representatives and administrators should make a public statement about how well the process had gone at the Tuesday board meeting.
“We can put forth a collaborative message to the community,” Francis said.
O’Leary immediately rejected the idea.
“Do you think we can go to the press and public and say this is all great if we don’t have an agreement?” she asked.
