Board creates committee of teachers

Fort Smith union president ‘heartbroken’ by decision

For almost 50 years, a local union has represented Fort Smith teachers. That’s about to change. The Fort Smith Public Schools Board voted 7-0 to establish a “committee of certified staff” to represent teachers “rather than pursue a new collective bargaining agreement with any entity.”

The board authorized Superintendent Doug Brubaker on Monday to inform the Fort Smith Education Association in writing their professional consultation agreement has lapsed and the board was going in a different direction.

“We were shocked and heartbroken” at the sudden decision to rescind the association’s negotiating rights, Lorrie Woodward, a second-grade teacher and president of the union, told the school board. She said the decision was being made with incomplete and inaccurate information.

The union, previously known as the Fort Smith Classroom Teachers Association, has represented Fort Smith teachers since 1970. But its membership fell well below 50 percent, which violates state law and Fort Smith School District policy, Marshall Ney, attorney for the district, told the board Monday night.

It has probably been below 50 percent for a decade, according to a document included in the board meeting packet.

Ney said the School District reported 372 of its 1,184 certified teachers this year are members of the Fort Smith Education Association, based on payroll records. Later, the union notified Ney the number is actually 379. That would be

32 percent of the district’s teachers.

Sid Johnson, a former president of the Arkansas Education Association, told the board things had gone well under the union representation.

“For 48 years, the School Board and teaching staff have had a great relationship,” he said.

Johnson said the union “has always” represented all of the teachers.

“If you negotiate for somebody, you have to give everybody the same benefits the members get,” Johnson said. “How do we know what nonmembers want? Because we survey them.”

Ney said the association’s advocates have argued state law doesn’t specify membership in the organization, simply representation of the majority.

“We heard those remarks from the podium tonight,” he said. “My perspective is the only way you can determine majority representation is through membership. … Otherwise, how in the world do you measure majority representation? … If you’re going to represent a majority, you have to measure the majority. The way you measure the majority is you look at membership.”

Concerning surveys, Ney told the board, “I guess my response to that is OK, but that doesn’t make you the representative of all employees because you send out the survey, that it takes the survey data, that it goes back for a vote, and everyone receives the benefit. … It doesn’t get back to [being] representative of a majority interest.”

Ney said in an email the Arkansas State Teachers Association sent a letter to the district earlier this month raising the issue of “teacher under-representation.” He said the issue concerns all employees who must be certified as teachers. That can include school employees such as administrators and librarians.

Under Arkansas Code Annotated 6-17-202, school districts can choose to recognize “an organization representing the majority of the teachers” for the purpose of negotiating personnel policies, salaries and educational matters of mutual concern under a written policy agreement.

Ney said Fort Smith and Little Rock are the only school districts in Arkansas he knows in which unions represent the majority of teachers. The other 267 districts use certified personnel policy committees, he told the board.

Arkansas Code Annotated 6-17-203(a) outlines the makeup of those committees: “Each school district shall have a committee on personnel policies which shall consist of no fewer than five classroom teachers and no more than three administrators, one of which may be the superintendent.”

The committee “shall be elected by a majority of the classroom teachers voting by secret ballot,” according to the statute.

In Little Rock, the district requires verification by April 30 of each year that — for the previous two consecutive years — more than 50 percent of the district’s teachers belonged to the union that represents them, Ney told the Fort Smith School Board.

The Fort Smith district wants to form a certified personnel policy committee as quickly as possible to “dramatically increase certified staff representation in the district,” according to a waiver form included in the meeting packet.

A waiver from the Arkansas Department of Education is needed so the district can make the change quickly as possible, instead of following the usual timetable. Arkansas Code Annotated 6-17-205 states personnel committees are to be formed in the first quarter of the school year.

“A waiver would give the district the flexibility to move immediately to create a broad based, fully representative committee of certified staff with representation from each of its 27 school buildings,” according to the document, which has a submission date of Dec. 13 listed on the first page.

“For 48 years, the School Board and teaching staff have had a great relationship.” — Sid Johnson, former president, Arkansas Education Association