APS Board Should Stick To Its Position

Back in May, following public outcry over the public paying up to three times for school employees serving in the Legislature (district salary, per diem and substitute teacher), the Albuquerque Public Schools board voted not to pay employees while they served during a legislative session.

The plan was to have a clear policy resolution in place that could be worked into ongoing union contract negotiations.

That fell apart when APS brass caved in and went along with Albuquerque Teachers Federation President Ellen Bernstein’s refusal to remove paid legislative leave from the APS contract specifically because the board banned it.

“I want to make it clear, this isn’t a fight about that piece of language,” she says. “It really is a process issue.”

She sure made her point — if her point is the process is broken.

Superintendent Winston Brooks excuses his buckling under, pragmatic as it was, to the fact the district won’t have any Roundhouse double dippers this coming legislative session — APS’ three employees who serve in Santa Fe are 1.) not running for re-election, 2.) not accepting a salary or 3.) not covered by the contract. And that’s assuming he doesn’t cave as the district has in the past and allow administrator Sheryl Williams Stapleton to be paid while serving in the House because he still feels administrators deserve the same benefits as teachers.

But the real point, as board member Martin Esquivel says, is that APS administrators acceding to Bernstein’s demand “puts us in a position of the tail wagging the dog. I’m bothered that the board cannot make a policy decision before clearing it with the union.”

And, as board member Kathy Korte says, the union “dig(s) in its heels on an issue that really, at the end of the day, they’re not accountable for. We are accountable to the people who elect us.”

According to the APS website, “by law, the Board of Education is charged with the employment of the superintendent, making policies and approving and oversight of the district’s $1.3 billion budget.”

But absent a board rejection of the proposed contract, their superintendent just handed that policy authority over to the union, along with a budget caveat that can have taxpayers paying three times so a whole classroom of children is left without its regular teacher for four to eight weeks every spring, right before standardized testing gears up.

Brooks says if the board rejects the contract, the issue could go to federal mediators. Fine. There is much more to this contract, and it is unfortunate that approval is all or nothing. But this is an important precedent.

The board is entrusted with making decisions in the best interests of the children it serves.

That’s what it did in its earlier vote on this issue. It should not relent.