Highlights of the May 11th CPS Board Meeting. I highly encourage you to watch the video under "School Board Meeting" tab in order to capture the essence of the emotional meeting. It will take a while to load, but once it is loaded begin to watch at marker 90 until the end. Sadly our recommended candidate, Darin Preis voted along with the rest of the board to accept the recommendation to REJECT our proposal and counterproposal, as well as the recommendation to reject the contract with the custodians.
Columbia Board of Education rejects union bids
Greg Grupe, a retired Hickman High School administrator, reacts after the Columbia Board of Education unanimously rejected a proposal from the teachers’ union Monday. “I’m disappointed that the board, which may be contemplating asking for bond and levy increases, would not address inequities in teacher pay,” Grupe said.
Emotions were raw Monday as the Columbia Board of Education unanimously voted to reject proposals from unions representing district teachers and custodians.
Many of the seats in the meeting room at the school district administration building were filled with members of the Columbia Missouri National Education Association — in red shirts — and the Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 773 — in orange shirts.
If the district does not reach an agreement with the teachers’ union, the three-year agreement approved last year remains in effect without changes. The custodians’ union has not reached a negotiated contract with the school district, so custodians will continue as at-will employees until negotiations resume in February.
Deputy Superintendent Dana Clippard said CPS and CMNEA representatives met five times to try to reach an agreement. The final proposal from the school district maintained existing pay increases for experience and education level and full payment of health, dental and life insurance for employees. Clippard said the district could not offer more because of the low level of state funding and the district’s deficit spending.
CPS Chief Financial Officer Linda Quinley said an additional $1.8 million expected from the state next year should go toward reducing the district’s planned deficit in 2015-16 from $3.5 million to $1.13 million. That additional money comes after Gov. Jay Nixon signed a state budget last week that includes an $84 million increase next year in the formula that funds public schools.
“The district can’t afford to give teachers a more substantial raise,” Clippard said. She said the administration team made that problem clear in its final proposal to the CMNEA representatives, but she hoped the district could do more for teachers in the future.
The teachers’ union in its counterproposal yielded on its request for a 5 percent increase to the base and minimum teacher salaries but continued to ask the district to restore teacher salaries frozen in 2009-10 at an estimated cost of $541,946. The union still sought wording in the negotiated contract to protect “teacher-directed” planning time.
CMNEA negotiating team member Mary Grupe said teachers have felt heard, valued and hopeful during collective bargaining sessions over the past few years. She said it was troubling this time around that the district team stopped attending sessions before negotiations were scheduled to end.
“This year your team stopped meeting with us, and they did it in your name,” Grupe said to the school board.
Kathy Steinhoff, another member of the CMNEA team, said restoring the frozen salaries is crucial.
“Now is the time to put this behind us,” Steinhoff said. She said loyal district teachers have waited eight years for those frozen salaries to be restored. “Now is the time to make it right.”
CMNEA negotiating team member Dean Klempke said protecting planning time and preventing unnecessary work interruptions were the top issues union members expressed in surveys.
Leia Brooks, a teacher at Hickman High School, said she thinks administrators are overly under the control of their hired negotiator, attorney Duane Martin. Martin’s pay through the end of February was $23,580, the district told CMNEA members.
“You have been guided by a force that doesn’t really care about the particulars of your district,” Brooks said.
Quinley, spokeswoman for the CPS negotiation team with custodians, encouraged the board to reject the proposal from the custodians’ union for a graduated discipline procedure and a due-process procedure when custodians are suspended or fired. She said it should not be in a contract because the administration would be compelled to follow the procedure in all situations.
Regina Guevara, field representative for Local 773, said custodians are more than cleaners.
“We're not asking for much,” Guevara said “We're asking for basic fairness.”
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