Little Rock School District teachers used a union membership meeting Tuesday to ask questions and express frustrations over the bare-bones draft contract that district leaders have offered employees for the 2015-16 school year.
More than 200 teachers -- many of them wearing red clothing as a sign of unity and support for public education -- attended the private meeting at the Arkansas Education Association building. The session came one day after district Superintendent Baker Kurrus released a five-page draft contract proposal to replace the employees' existing 93-page teacher contract that will expire Oct. 31.
The 93-page contract, also known as the Professional Negotiations Agreement, is the product of decades of collective bargaining between representatives of the district and the employees.
"There was a lot of venting of concerns about the document that was released by the district," Cathy Koehler, president of the Little Rock Education Association, told reporters after the 2½-hour session. The association is the union that represents Little Rock district teachers and most support staff members in their contract negotiations with the district.
Most of the teachers declined to talk to reporters. A few teachers muttered that association leaders did not have the answers to their questions about a new contract and that the tone of the meeting was contentious. Other teachers expressed doubts about the success of contract talks. But still others were optimistic that issues would be resolved.
"We reminded everyone that it is only a rough draft and that we have respectfully asked to go into negotiations as our current agreement requires us to do," Koehler said. "Mr. Kurrus is taking that under advisement and I believe he will be speaking to other people above him."
She said that if there are issues of great concern to district administrators, "show us what they are, treat us as professionals, we are going to have a professional, civil dialogue and we are going to do what is best for kids."
As for teachers and support staff members , they voiced a great deal of support during the meeting for keeping their district-provided health insurance benefits, Koehler said. The insurance benefit has in the past been equal to the cost of a monthly premium for an individual employee's coverage. That is greater than what is paid by most other Arkansas school districts.
The draft contract released this week by Kurrus includes only a blank for the dollar amount the district will provide toward each teacher's 2015-16 health insurance premium.
There were no votes on any issues or actions during the closed door session, Koehler said, and no additional membership meetings are scheduled.
"This was very good at clearing the air and getting everyone up to speed," she said about the session, adding that teachers will spend the days ahead making preparations for the new school year that starts Monday for students.
Kurrus said in a telephone interview later Tuesday that district leaders are going to negotiate in good faith with the employees on a contract.
"That's the way it works," he said.
Asked if he has to get permission from Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key and Gov. Asa Hutchinson to proceed with any negotiations: "I'm not going to get out too far ahead of my bosses, that's for sure," Kurrus said and added, "I can't speak for them but we'll cooperate and work together as a team -- just as we have up to now."
The draft contract proposal comes at a time when the Little Rock School District is operating under the direction of the state. Key acts as the school board for the state-controlled district, which means that he will have the final say on any new contract for the employees.
The Arkansas Board of Education voted 5-4 in January to assume control of the 24,o00-student district by removing the locally elected school board and putting the superintendent under the supervision of the state education commissioner. The takeover was triggered by the fact that six of the district's 48 schools are labeled by the state as academically distressed. Fewer than half of the students at those six schools -- Baseline Elementary, Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools and J.A. Fair, Hall and McClellan high schools -- scored at proficient levels on state math and literacy exams over the course of three years.
After the district Superintendent Dexter Suggs resigned last spring in the face of allegations that he plagiarized part of his doctoral dissertation, Key, the state commissioner, appointed lawyer, businessman and former Little Rock School Board member Kurrus to the superintendent's job.
Koehler called the state-controlled district "such a new reality for all of us," and said "nothing is going to be the way it was and that's OK. It's how do we as adults process that and mitigate the impact on students."
The association president said that both district and union representatives have been trained in conducting productive negotiations. The association's team is ready to negotiate at any time and can adapt to changes if that is necessary.
"We are going to find a way to make this work," she said.
The association president said that there are parts of the 93-page contract that some consider to be minutiae, and there are parts of the negotiated agreement for which no one remembers the reasons.
"It must have been important at some point," she said, adding that those parts can be changed. "What we will be discussing is what will the agreement look like for the Little Rock district and employees in 2015-16, and what do we need to do to move forward so that students are mastering reading, writing and arithmetic."
Metro on 08/12/2015