I am pleased to say that the calendars for 2002/2003 and 2003/2004 were well received. I am also pleased to say that we are coming into the home stretch on negotiating this year’s contract. The Evaluation Committee has submitted their work to the Board of Director’s as well as the Negotiations Team, who will take it to the table and turn it into contract language. My sincerest thanks to all the people who helped get that article ready for its final phase, it was certainly tedious work. We still have a number of issues to resolve, but we are hopeful that they will be resolved in a timely manner.
We have Tentatively Agreed to some clean up of Article 9: Hours of Employment, where we put into contract language some existing practices, like the right to a 90 minute lunch on pupil free, non-staff development days (e.g. the site staff meeting day at the beginning of the year).
In addition to this work, we have been working on Article 17: Complaint Procedures and Personnel Files which we agreed to split into two separate articles: Article 5 Complaint Procedures (which was vacant) and Article 17 Personnel Files. It just makes more sense to separate them because they really are two separate issues and we had a vacant article to plug it into. I am unable to give you any more specifics on their final forms until after the Board of Directors approve our work at their monthly meeting. This is one of those occasions when the necessary time lapse between the writing of this column, the meeting of the Board of Directors, the Board of Education, and the publication of the Benchmark make it difficult to include the details on what’s been happening at the table.
As always, we deal with money last, so although we are aware of your keen interest in this area, the state has finally given the district some firm figures. This is very unusual, but given the changes in the economy, and the impact of the heightened security and the power shortage on the state’s resources-well it seems that it took them a while to figure out how to work out the kinks. Districts that made agreements prior to the finalization of the state’s budget are in the awkward position of trying to unspend money-a very difficult thing to do. We will at least be in the position of dealing with facts.
As it stands we have three more dates scheduled for negotiations this month and in March with a bit of a gap due to report cards. I may be being optimistic, but we hope to be presenting a completed contact for your approval sometime in April.