Pulaski County district, unions in talks for 3 hours

The leaders of the Pulaski County Special School District and its employee unions were unable to reach an agreement Thursday after three hours of mediated discussions about proposed changes designed to help the district trim $7 million from its 2012-13 budget.

The groups plan to continue talks at 10:30 a.m. Monday at the district’s administration building.

Union leaders and state-appointed Superintendent Jerry Guess described Thursday’s talks as “positive,” but they would not discuss the specifics of the negotiations.

“We’re all going to do the right thing, and I think the presence of mediators have brought us closer to that,” said Marty Nix, president of the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, the teachers’ union.

Nix and Emry Chesterfield, president of the Pulaski Association of Support Staff, which represents employees in the 17,000-student district, met in one room of the Arkansas Education Association headquarters Thursday, discussing proposals with a state and federal mediator, who met with Guess and an attorney in a separate room.

Union leaders have said they want to lock in salary and insurance terms for next year at this year’s rates before considering any other budget matters. Those issues weren’t settled Thursday, Nix said.

She would not say if the unions held the same position on the matter.

Guess wouldn’t speculate about whether another day of negotiations would yield an agreement among the groups.

“I think this has been a good day, and we’ve been talking about important issues,” he said Thursday. “But there have been no proposals and no decisions.”

The mediators — contracted through the Federal Mediation Conciliation Service — determined when to break for the day, Guess said.

The groups previously declared an impasse after a joint bargaining session last week that lasted less than 30 minutes.

Guess has said failure to trim the budget would be “fatal” to the district.

Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell took control of the school system, dissolving its board and appointing a new superintendent, in June to resolve financial management issues that had led the Arkansas Board of Education to declare the district in fiscal distress.

If the district can’t remedy its financial situation through a state-approved plan within two years, Arkansas law allows the state to take further actions — including merging it with neighboring school systems.

Guess has said the district, which is spending more revenue than it takes in, needs to cut $13.6 million in expenses from the 2012-13 budget. That total would include $7 million in savings achieved through negotiating concessions with the employee groups.

The district has already

identified more than $6 million of other cuts, which would include the elimination of 77 jobs through attrition and layoffs.

Guess said Thursday that those cuts could be achieved largely by not replacing retiring or resigning teachers and staff members. When teachers left midyear, the district hired replacements on temporary contracts so they wouldn’t be committed to additional financial obligations, he said.

Guess told the state board in February that he hopes to reach agreements with unions about revising areas of employee contracts that exceed statemandated minimum requirements, such as length of the work year, pay for lunch and bus duty, and contributions for health insurance plans.

If the groups fail to reach a compromise through mediated discussions, they will next present their best and final offers to a third-party panel that will make a nonbinding decision.

The district has about 2,800 employees.