Outing the Contract

I think that every district should have their CBAs posted on-line. We should be proud of the work we've done in that regard, and I think we open ourselves up to attack the most when we hide the agreements like they're something secretive. When I was doing the research for this post about being able to find teacher contracts on the internet I emailed my state representative with some thoughts and this is what he wrote back:

Greetings Mr. TheRain:

House Bill 2921, by Rep. Roach addressed this very issue. The bill was
not scheduled for a hearing by the Democrats.

The collective bargaining agreement does have a significant impact upon
policy and the operation of schools. It sometimes limits parents rights,
sometimes adds unreasonable costs to schools, and generally seeks to
assure the primacy of the interests of the adult employees of the school
district rather than students' best interests.

I'll let the union-bashing go begging for another day; the part that I'm most interested in is House Bill 2921, which you can read here, and the short, brief life of 2921 is recounted here. There were 5 co-sponsors (all Republican), including the two ranking minority members of the House Education Committee. The trick is that the committee is 8 democrats and 5 republicans, and the majority rules.

I've got emails out to the sponsors. I'm hoping they'll re-introduce it in the coming session.