Schools set to talk cuts with unions

— Representatives of the Pulaski County Special School District and its two employee unions plan to meet Wednesday to talk about Superintendent Jerry Guess’ call earlier this week for employee concessions to cut $13.6 million in expenses for the 2012-13 academic year.

However, just what can be negotiated is already in dispute, with district leaders saying the entire contracts are subject to change and employee leaders saying only salary and insurance provisions are open for debate.

“We’ll discuss the budget crisis and work [hard] to make sure that we can work out a balanced budget,” Marty Nix, president of the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, said Thursday. “But to me that is not part of negotiations. It’s unreasonable to expect teachers to shoulder the entire cut. We’ll do our part, but to open the entire contract and make changes to the entire contract is unreasonable,” she said.

Guess told leaders of the teachers association and the Pulaski Association of Support Staff in separate letters this week that the district is under a “mandate” from the state.

That mandate is to negotiate changes in the employees’ compensation packages and in their work rules to accomplish “substantial” economic savings and increases in operational efficiency and flexibility, he said.

Bill Goff, the district’s chief financial officer, told the Arkansas Board of Education on Monday that the district needs to cut millions of dollars in the 2012-13 school year to avoid spending more money than it will take in and to afford some new costs to the district.

District administrators have so far identified $6.6 million in cuts, including the reduction of 77 jobs through attrition and layoffs.

But, Goff said, efforts to cut an additional $7 million must affect employees in a district where 80 percent of expenses are personnel-related.

He said there is more than $14 million in benefits to district teachers that are in excess of state requirements that could be cut or reduced.

The teachers’ negotiated contract, for example, sets the teacher work year at 192 days while the state minimum is 190 days. District teachers are provided more leave than the one day of sick leave per month required by state law.

District teachers are paid for lunch and bus duty when state law permits teachers to be assigned to 60 minutes of duty a week without additional pay. As still another example, the district contributes $272.80 per month for employee health insurance but is required to pay only $131 per month.

Goff said that an additional $1.4 million in potential savings is available in the contract with the district’s support service employees, who include bus drivers, aides, food service workers and maintenance workers.

Nix sent a letter to Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell suggesting a meeting Wednesday. In that letter she said contract provisions related to salaries and insurance are subject to annual negotiations, according to Article XVII in the teachers’ five-year contract. That contract is due to expire in 2015.

The teachers association and district have just recently agreed that there will be no across-the-board pay raise to district teachers and to a change in the structure of the employee insurance program for the current 2011-12 school year.

Kimbrell serves as the “School Board” for the Pulaski County Special district in the wake of the state Department of Education’s takeover of the 17,000-student district last June. The takeover occurred after the State Board of Education in March classified the district as fiscally distressed because of financial mismanagement uncovered by state and private audits.

Earlier this week, the state board added to the district’s reasons for fiscal distress, citing the district’s declining reserve funds.

The district must comply with its state-approved financial improvement plan to be removed from the fiscal distress program within the next 11/2 years. Otherwise, the state Education Board is mandated by law to merge the district with one or more surrounding districts.

Guess, appointed by Kimbrell in June to head the district, responded on Kimbrell’s behalf to Nix and Emry Chesterfield, who is president of the Pulaski Association of Support Staff.

Guess said he was seeking to reopen negotiations under the contract’s Article I, Section V, headlined “Modification.” A provision of the section states that changes in parts of the agreement may be negotiated without voiding the agreement.

“The administration proposes modifications of the entire agreement in order to comply with the Arkansas Department of Education fiscal distress removal mandate,” Guess wrote to Nix and Chesterfield in nearly identical letters.

“That mandate is that the district negotiate with PACT changes in the certified employee compensation package set forth in the PACT agreement that will result in substantial economic savings,” he said.

“The district is also directed by [the Arkansas Department of Education] to negotiate changes in employee work rules now established by that agreement which modifications will accomplish substantial increases in operational efficiency and flexibility,” he wrote.

Guess added that he would be prepared with possible contract language for the negotiations Wednesday.

The superintendent then became philosophical in his letter, saying that the district’s fiscal-distress classification and the state’s mandate to “fix it” by achieving a balanced budget in the next school year “means to me that these negotiations are going to be regressive.”

“Contract negotiations can be relatively pleasant when the subject is how to divide excess money between two parties,” he continued. “On the other hand, it’s never fun to negotiate how much each party must pay to cover unanticipated losses. However, I renew to you the promise I made to the State Board of Education on Monday. I promise you that I’ll approach these negotiations with an open mind and positive attitude about success.”

After sending the first letter suggesting the Wednesday meeting, Nix followed with a second letter — this one addressed to Paul Brewer, chief executive officer/executive director for human resources, asking for a long list of specifics about the district’s operation.

Some of her requests included the possible savings that could be realized if every district employee, including principals and other administrators, worked just 192 days a year.

She also asked for a list of attorneys and amounts paid them during the current fiscal year, staffing allocation projections for the coming school year, revenue summaries, lists of teachers and administrators in order of their seniority in the district, information on leave taken by employees, and a list of 77 positions to be cut for next year.

Additionally, she asked for student enrollment information by school and the number of teachers doing morning and afternoon bus duty.

Nix said that once the information is provided, it will “expedite the negotiations process as well as the talks surrounding cost-reduction strategies.”

She said the employee representatives “look forward to working collaboratively ... to reach an agreement that maintains and protects the well-being of our teaching and support personnel while continuing to achieve the highest possible standards for PCSSD students.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/17/2012

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