LITTLE ROCK — One member’s absence and an unclear purpose for the meeting caused the School Board for the Pulaski County Special School District to cancel a 5 p.m. meeting Thursday on how to proceed with plans to operate the district without the involvement of the teachers union.
School Board President Tim Clark of Maumelle announced the cancellation at5:15 p.m. to about 30 teachers, parents and reporters who were waiting for the session to start.
Clark did not announce a reason but said later that board member Sandra Sawyer of west Pulaski County couldn’t attend. And, he said, there was some discrepancy in what board members were told about the reason for the meeting. The single item on the agenda Thursday was “consideration of personnel policy matter.”
The School Board’s own policy requires that business transacted at any special or emergency meeting will be limited to the purpose given for the special meeting unless all board members are present and all board members agree to consider and transact other business.
The cancellation notice prompted some audible grumbling from the audience.
School district parent Dawn Jackson called out, “What a circus!”
The plan for a special meeting followed on the heels of Wednesday’s 10-hour, court ordered mediation session that required the presence of all School Board members, officers of the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers and the district’s newly formed personnel policies committee of teachers and administrators.
The mediation session was intended to give district and association leaders an opportunity to make revisions in the teachers’ existing contract for the 2010-11 school year. Students start classes on Aug. 19.
The session, however, ended with the attorneys for the district and association declaring that they were at an impasse after the district’s team wanted the union to agree to end, almost immediately, its representation of teachers.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox ordered the mediation in an effort to end an eight-month battle between the School Board and association over the board’s efforts to withdraw recognition of the association as the contract bargaining agent for the district’s 1,200 teachers.
Fox has ruled that the board can sever its ties to the association but failed to meet necessary legal requirements to have a personnel policies committee and a set of personnel policies to take the place of the union and the union-negotiated teacher contract. The judge ruled earlier this month that the teachers contract used this past year remains in effect for the 2010-11 school year.
Keith Billingsley, an attorney for the school district, said Thursday after the board meeting was canceled that the reason for the meeting was to keep the district moving toward compliance with state law on personnel policies and the personnel policies committee.
“Something of this magnitude, that deals with all certified staff, should not take place in such a manner that anyone complains about the process,” Billingsley said. “We decided that it was a better course to cancel the meeting and do it when all the elected members could be here.”
He said the board wanted to resolve some of the issues generated in the previous day’s mediation session, but he declined to be specific about the issues.
In regard to severing the district from the union, Billingsley said the personnel policies committee members elected officers Wednesday. The committee, which was supposed to have 15 members, only had five present Wednesday. Each was provided copies of the personnel policies that were approved in the spring by the board.
He said the committee by law now has at least 10 working days to review the policies and suggest revisions to the board for a possible vote of approval. The policies would then be presented to the district’s teachers for a vote.
If more than 50 percent of the teachers approve the policies, they would meet legal requirements to go into effect this school year, Billingsley said. If there is no approval, then the policies would, by law, go into effect the next year, 2011-12.
Marty Nix, president of the association, argued that the teachers’ contract in place this past year is supposed to remain in place for this new school year.
“They are breaching it right and left,” Nix said about the district.
She pointed to the district’s plans to add 40 minutes to the elementary pupil’s day asa move contrary to the terms of the existing contract. She disputed the contention of district officials that the purpose was to improve student achievement.
The change, instead, was to put the district into compliance with a state law that says that teacher planning time must be included in the student day unless a district negotiates with its teachers union to accommodate the teacher planning time outside the student class day.
School Board members remain sharply divided, 4-3, in favor of withdrawing recognition of the union.
Board member Bill Vasquez of Jacksonville, who has consistently voted in the minority on the issue, said Thursday that the district’s attorneys did not consult with him at all Wednesday during the course of the mediation session.
“I was window dressing and a stage prop,” Vasquez said about his role in the mediation.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 07/30/2010