It's back to committee for a collective bargaining election policy in the Columbia Public Schools. It is frustrating that some board members don't understand that they must honor the constitutional rights of teachers. The reporter got the details of the HH and HA policies wrong below, but that doesn't really matter. The bottom line is teachers deserve their constitutional right to choose their exclusive representative. We need to keep telling our school board members that simple truth.
Monday, October 10, 2011 | 11:24 p.m. CDT; updated 9:00 a.m. CDT, Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Columbia Missourian
BY GARRETT EVANS, JAMES AYELLO
COLUMBIA — Columbia School Board members decided by a vote of 6-1 to send two collective bargaining options back to the board's policy committee for further consideration.
The Missouri School Board Association has created multiple policies that state school districts can choose from in order to negotiate with their employees. These policies are guidelines to help districts create an effective collective bargaining process.
The first policy, called HH, would allow either for an exclusive representative, such as a teachers association, to collectively bargain with administrators, or it would let multiple representatives collectively bargain with those administrators.
The second policy, HA, provides legal ground rules for districts to negotiate with employee associations. This policy outlines election rules for employee groups and recognizes which groups are allowed to collectively bargain.
Board member Jonathan Sessions made the motion to send both policies back to the policy committee for review.
"My reasoning for making this motion is purely that I think we have a lot of confusion, and the board received an email today from someone that truly did not understand what was going on," he said. "We can do this better."
Sessions said Columbia could have a custom policy, rather than one of the two sample options that covers 520 of the state's districts.
Board member Michelle Pruitt agreed and said that the motion was "not a bad idea."
"It's very important we get the process correct on this particular policy," she said. "We have to make sure our process is the best for the district."
Superintendent Chris Belcher noted that if the motion did pass, he would ask for permission to seek outside legal counsel that specializes in creating policy exclusive to individual districts in Missouri.
He said the Missouri School Board Association has always said these policies do not constitute something that you should just adopt, they are only frameworks to start discussion.
Belcher said he applauded the board for being so considerate of the influence they have gotten from both sides of the issue.
"Certainly you want to please everybody, and this will give us some more time to see if we can get closer to that goal," he said.
Board member Christine King also supported the motion and called the two policies "polar opposites." She said there are many community voices that need to be heard.
Tom Rose was the only board member to oppose reviewing the plans further.
"Should we decide to send this back to policy committee for revision I believe and hope that most of the policy as written will remain, and that only a few points will be changed to come to a consensus if we can't," he said.
Rose said he believes that even with legal counsel the board will still have to make a difficult choice.
"We are still going to have make a hard decision that not everyone is going to agree with," Rose said.
The policy committee meets the last Monday of every month.
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