SCS teachers vote to negotiate for new agreement
Shelby County Schools teachers rallied enough support to go back to the table and negotiate a new contract with the district, the United Education Association of Shelby County announced Monday.
The two teacher unions needed at least 51 percent of teachers to vote yes in an online election for the negotiating process, which in Tennessee is called collaborative conferencing, to happen.
They fell short of that goal once before, but this time, 60 percent of teachers voted they wanted to conference, UEA President Tikela Rucker said.
Rucker said the union was “ecstatic” about the vote.
“It’s huge that we’re going forward to have a seat at the table,” she said.
Voting took place over the course of two weeks online and ended Friday.
The UEA and the Memphis Shelby County Education Association can now press the district on issues like pay, benefits and working conditions.
About 7,000 teachers have been working under an expired contract since March. That agreement took effect in 2015, the first since the district merger.
With no formal agreement in place, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson has the power to unilaterally make changes to teachers’ working conditions. He told the unions in a letter he didn’t anticipate making any significant changes. But had the teachers again failed to come to an agreement that collaborative conferencing should happen, Hopson would have retained that power with little guidance on how to move forward.
Hopson helped teachers rally support to go back to the table, appearing in front of a group of UEA members last month to encourage their participation in the process.
“There’s always a great way to have teacher voice if you have strong representation,” Hopson told the crowd of teachers during a 10-minute speech where he was loudly cheered.
Along with voting that they wanted negotiations to happen, teachers also had to choose which union, or neither, they wanted to represent them. The vote determines the proportion of seats each union will have at the table. Based on the results of the vote, UEA will get five seats at the negotiating table. MSCEA will get 6.
The unions plan to push the district on changing its pay scale to reflect years of experience as well as reward teachers for advanced degrees. The district has moved away from that in recent years, opting instead to pay bonuses and give increases based on teachers’ evaluations. Those evaluations are partially based on their students’ scores on state tests, as well as classroom observations.
The collaborative conferencing process could take a year.
Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer. pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.