Union-ratified deal gets LR district nod

Leaders of the Little Rock School District and the Little Rock Education Association union of district employees have tentatively agreed to a 2018-19 work agreement, minus salary and other provisions that will be negotiated later.

The 10-page proposed Professional Negotiated Agreement, ratified by the union membership last week, was sent Wednesday to Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who acts as the school board in the state-controlled district and must approve the agreement before it can be finalized.

Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore, who was part of the negotiating team for the district, has recommended that Key approve the agreement.

Key had not made a decision on the tentative agreement as of Friday.

If Key declines to approve the proposal, negotiations

between the parties would likely have to resume to produce an agreement that both the association membership and Key can ratify.

Teresa Gordon, an elementary school media specialist who is on leave from the district to serve as the association’s president, said the negotiating teams made only a few, relatively slight changes in the 2018-19 proposal as compared with the 2017-18 Professional Negotiated Agreement.

“We have not discussed financials at all,” Gordon said, referring to any increases in employee salaries or alterations to benefits including health insurance.

“We’ll begin discussing that now,” she said, but noted that the work on the financial terms will take awhile to allow for a review of the district’s just completed 2018-19 budget as well as local property tax records.

The proposed agreement now specifically defines “administrative employees” and excludes them from being represented by the association in contract talks. An

administrative employee is anyone whose function is to evaluate staff, according to the proposal.

The tentative agreement also includes the $3,000 a year benefit that has been paid to teachers who earn national certification.

The agreement also alters the method of verifying association membership. More than 50 percent of the employees must be association members to qualify the association as the exclusive representative of the employees in contract talks. That verification of membership is to be done by an accountant selected by and paid for by both the district and the association.

“I feel pretty good about it,” Gordon said. “I think that both teams worked to get what we wanted in the agreement that will help us going forward. I hope Commissioner Key will sign it sooner rather than later.”

The district was represented in the contract talks by Poore, Booker Arts Magnet Elementary School Principal Cheryl Carson and interim Human Resources Director Robert Robinson. The association was represented by Gordon, Brittani Brooks and Lakeitha Austin.