LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County Circuit judge on Monday questioned whether the School Board for the Pulaski County Special School District acted prematurely in voting April 20 to sever ties with its teachers’ union without having personnel policies or a personnel policies committee in place.
At a court hearing attended by about 80 teachers, district administrators and School Board members, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox directly asked Acting Superintendent Rob Mc-Gill and school district attorney Jay Bequette whether personnel policies and the teacher committee existed at the time of the board’s vote.
Fox ruled April 8 that the board had the authority to discontinue recognizing the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers as the teacher contract bargaining agent. But he also said thedistrict had to meet legal prerequisites of establishing a personnel policies committee and the personnel policies to do so.
The judge had declared the School Board’s original Dec. 8 vote to withdraw union recognition null and void because the district had not met those requirements.
In response to the judge, McGill said Monday that the board in its April vote agreed to rely on the existing union negotiated teachers’ contract through the end of this fiscal year, which is Wednesday. At the time of the April vote, McGill said, the personnel policies were being formed. They were subsequently approved by the School Board on June 8 and are now in place.
As for the personnel policies committee, teacher members were elected late last week by about 200 of the district’s 1,200 teachers in a low-key election organized by a Maumelle Middle School teacher. The committee is required by law to be made up of no more than three administrators and at least five teachers.
“When did that wholly constituted personnel policies committee have its first meeting?” Fox asked Bequette.
“It will be in the next couple of days,” Bequette responded.
“Our hearing is today on the 28th,” Fox said. “We’re still getting down to, legally, does that chin the bar?”
Fox did not issue a decision Monday on whether the School Board acted correctly in April, saying that he needed to take some time to go through the legal issues.
But the judge did say he that he wanted to issue a decision soon because he anticipates that one party or the other will appeal his decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court. All post-trial briefs are due to Fox by July 6.
Monday’s hearing was the latest development in a seven-month battle between the 17,700-student district and the teachers’ association. The association sued the school district in December for breach of contract after the School Board voted to discontinue recognizing the union as the contract bargaining agent for the teachers.
Individual teachers followed up with a second lawsuit against the district challenging the process the district is using to replace the current contract with a contract based on board-approved policies.
The two lawsuits now have been consolidated into one case.
Clayton Blackstock, an attorney for the teachers’ association, has argued that the district, is violating the existing teachers’ contract that says it remains in effect until the School Board and association members approve a successor agreement.
Blackstock also argued Monday that state law on personnel policies committees requires that the teacher members of a committee be elected by their fellow teachers in the first quarter of the school year and not at the end of the year when teachers are vacationing.
Once a committee is formed early in the school year, it is to use the remainder of the year to work through policy proposals, he said.
That constitutes “an orderly process for reviewing any changes to those policies,” he said, “as opposed to being forced into looking at 197 pages of new policies within a two-day period to say here is what we think about them.”
Bequette told Fox that the school district has tried to scrupulously follow the judge’s April order and relevant state law on withdrawing union recognition.
He said the district was hindered by provisions in the law that prevent district administrators from setting up or carrying out an election for the teacher members of the personnel policies committee.
McGill told Fox that he notified all teachers about their need to elect their representatives to a personnel policies committee and he sent a letter to Marty Nix, the association president, asking for her assistance in setting up an election.
Nix testified that she declined to help, saying that as the association president her responsibility centered on attaining a negotiated contract and not an election for a personnel policies committee.
Janie Naylor, a Maumelle Middle School teacher who closely monitors School Board matters, testified that she waited a while for someone to organize an election for the committee members but she eventually called McGill’s office to see if it was being done. She said she agreed in that phone conversation with McGill to take on the task because teachers “needed aback-up plan.”
She solicited help from a handful of other teachers to call for nominations. Ballots were mailed June 16 to the homes of all teachers for the election of 13 committee members from among the 24 nominees.
A few more than 200 teachers completed ballots that were returned by Friday to Mills University Studies High School, where they were counted that evening. Two people - one elementary and one secondary school teacher - were elected from each of six School Board member election zones.
Only one person was selected from Zone 7, however, because that zone has only an elementary school and no middle or high school.
The election results were posted Sunday on the district’s website: pcssd.org.
Naylor, a member of the association, in court attributed the low number of completed ballots to efforts by the association to discourage participation in the voting.
After the court session, Nix denied that anything was handed out to teachers to persuade them against voting. She said she herself chose not to vote.
Bequette argued to the judge that a school district superintendent has the authority to propose personnel policies to the school board. And, he said, it is ultimately the school board that has the authority to set district policies - even in districts that engage in collective bargaining.
Bequette said there is a gap in state law concerning how a school district is supposed to move from collective bargaining with a teachers’ union to operating with a personnel policies committee that makes recommendations to the school board on teacher employee-related matters.
A total of 240 of the state’s 244 school districts operate with personnel policies committees and do not engage in collective bargaining, he said.
Bequette suggested that there is some guidance in Arkansas Code Annotated 6-17-209, which describes how personnel policies committees should be formed in districts that are merging together.
In those cases, he said, teachers from all affected districts are put on the new personnel policies committee and there is no restriction on the time of the year it is done.
Blackstock said that in the same statute, the new personnel policies in a merged district are not to diminish or reduce the benefits and conditions teachers had in their original districts. He argued that at a minimum the current provisions in the existing teacher contract for Pulaski County Special district teachers should be retained for the 2010-11 school year.
Fox said at the end of the hearing that he is dealing strictly with the legal issues and not with running a school district.
“I just want to remind you all whether the decision of the board results in elementary school kids having to stay at school an extra hour or ride the school bus at different times - those are [the board’s] decisions to make,” Fox said.
“That is the executive branch of the government, not the judiciary. If they are making decisions or are not making decisions that are in accordance with what the public wants, that’s up to the voters.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/29/2010