Present: Pam Costain, Tom Madden, Chris Stewart, Lydia Lee, Peggy Flanagan, Emma Hixson, Bill Green, Mauri Melander, and Alan Giles.

The meeting starts with Emma passing out a list of the administration’s issues that they have presented in the negotiations.  Emma says that this same list has been shared with the teachers.  Emma describes that they are painstakingly working through a “interest-based bargaining” process and that they are with two facilitators from the State Bureau of Mediation Services.  She describes that interest-based bargaining first identifies “issues” and “interests” based around the issues. 

Emma reads off the district’s issues and the associated “interests”.
(1) Teacher transfer and layoff
* Get the best fit teachers for each position and program to accelerate achievement
* Be able to retain those teachers
* Accelerating achievement, closing the gap
* We view this as respecting teachers as professionals
* Empowering schools to select and retain these teachers
* Establishing a more comprehensive and fair process for selecting faculty
* Regaining trust with the community by building relationships with families
* Stable staffing and learning environments
* Increasing school enrollment
* Enhancing professional learning communities
* Having program integrity
Emma says that MFT has not identified their interests around this issue.

(2) Professional development
Emma says she doesn’t need to review this in detail because this is not a real controversial issue and that the teachers share our interests as they are generally stated here.  Emma says that the administration would like to get more professional development days “instead of so many record-keeping days.”  Emma says that they would like to get teachers to do mandatory training in the summer.

(3) Alternative compensation
Emma says that if we are going to continue the program we need a new agreement.  Emma also notes that teachers are going to vote on if they want to continue this program in June.  Pam asks about which program they are talking about here, Q-Comp or ATPPS, and Emma says that all of these fall under ATPPS.  Pam also wonders if the teachers voted on this recently.  Emma says that teachers vote on this every year, but the last ATPPS vote was the previous year.

Emma identifies a couple interests related to this issue:
* The administration would like to have a single salary schedule, rather than two salary schedules, both for administrative and substantive reasons.
* The administration is interested in anything that enhances professional development and teacher assessment.
* The administration would like to see enhanced remuneration based on teachers showing motivation to do better
* The district has limited resources
Emma says that the teachers have not declared their interests on this issue either

(3) Salary and benefits
* The district has limited resources
* The district needs to look at cost containment and streamlining things

(4) Technology
Emma says that MFT shares their interests with respect to this issue and so it may be taken off as a negotiations issue.

(5) “Housekeeping”
Emma says that there are a lot of things that need updating in the contract.  However, Emma says, they are being “a little low profile” about some of the things in this area.  Emma says that they are proposing to remove two articles in the contract document that are not actually part of the legal contract; articles about shared leadership and professional development.  Emma says that they would like to have these articles in a separate document.

Bill says that Rob had talked about wanting to remove extraneous language in the contract, and he asks Emma if that is what she is referring to is the same thing that Rob has referred to.  Emma says that Rob has referred to these articles in the context that Bill characterizes.  However, Emma notes that the negotiations might be a different context, and MFT negotiating team member Lynn Nordgren is very attached to some of the language in the article about professional development.

Bill asks about what the district’s interest is in taking out contract language if it’s an issue between Lynn and Rob.  Emma notes that one interest arose recently around the issue of fresh starts, where Rob was citing contract language from Article IV and Emma told him that Article IV is not a grievable article and not something that is followed “to the letter”.

Tom asks if the superfluous language that Emma is describing is the same as contract language that could conflict with possible State law changes.  He talks about a possibility of the contract defining something based on the state Q-Comp law, and if the state changed that law, the district could be “left holding the bag”.  Emma seems to miss Tom’s point and just says that the Teacher Tenure Act law is included in the contract for reference. 

Emma says that they do try to clean up the contract every time they negotiate, but the contract is so long that they always miss things.  Emma also notes that the teachers have not responded about any of the Housekeeping issues.

Emma diverges and notes that there have been four negotiation sessions to this point and she feels like they are going incredibly slowly and everybody is being very careful about the relationship.  She says that the union gave the administration team a list of the union’s issues, and she describes that she and Rob “butted heads” about setting a date that would be a limit for introducing new issues.  Emma says that she wanted the deadline to be May 31 and that Rob wanted the deadline to be the end of June and they ultimately agreed on June 22.

Mauri asks about the non-greivable articles and what the administration’s bottom line is on that issue.  Mauri says that “the language around the fresh starting really did throw everyone for a loop”, and she wonders why they would have language in a contract that they don’t abide by.  Mauri asks if the administration has a bottom line about this issue in the negotiations and suggests that they say something like “we can no longer move forward with a contract that says that fresh starting is optional when we live in an era of NCLB”. 

Chris says that there was very specific language in the contract related to fresh starts, but it was in a non-greivable article and so it angers teachers.  Emma says that the contract outlined a process of school support and whatnot related to fresh starts, but Mauri interjects that the contract said that the school Board would have the final say about whether or not a school was fresh started.

Lydia says that the contract doesn’t use the term “fresh start”, rather it sues the term “restructuring”.  Emma notes that the contract uses both terms.

Pam tries to shift the conversation away from the specific language about fresh starts and tries to ask Emma what the bigger issue is.  However, Emma pretty much ignores Pam and responds to Mauri.

Emma says that to understand the way the contract, you have to understand the way Louise Sundin worked.  Emma says that Louise wanted a contract where everything was spelled out in the ideal way it should work, even though she knew that in reality it often didn’t work that way.  Emma says that the contract is the result of a long and “pretty collaborative relationship” with the MFT president.  Emma says that the longer Louise is gone, the more she misses how collaborative she was.  Emma says that Louise herself would often want to deviate from the contract on specific issues like fresh starts.

Emma says that now they have an MFT president who is very literal and so they need to make the contract more literal.

Chris says that this is the reason why a contract should be literal, so that when you don’t have someone around who is willing to bend the rules, you have the contract to fall back on.  Chris said that the goal should be to have a simplified, easy-to-read contract.

Chris says that he also doesn’t understand the deadline for new issues, and Emma responds that legally, either side can bring up a new issue at any time.  Emma says the deadline is just an agreed-upon approach for the negotiations.

Chris asks if there is anything we can do to improve the diversity of the teacher pool, and to protect teachers in specialized programs like Montessori.  Emma says that the protection of teachers in specialized programs depends what they negotiate for layoff.

Emma says that the diversity issue is tougher because we can’t protect from layoff based on race.  Emma says that the more junior elementary teachers we retain the more diverse the pool is and the more we lay off, the less diverse. Chris asks what the “big idea” is then for diversifying the workforce.  Pam says that the problem is the shrinking workforce.

Peggy brings up the fact that there is a law that allows for racial preference in retaining Native American teachers.  Emma says that the “Indian Preference Law” allows the district to retain even probationary Indian teachers during layoffs and that the district has done this consistently.  Peggy asks if this layoff protection could be extended to programs that serve Native American children, schools that are part of the MUID agreement.  Peggy says that she gets lots of questions about this issue.

Emma says that the administration approached MFT about designating the MUID schools as “new sites” so that they could have interview & select, but MFT would not agree to do that.  Emma says that “this was a very upsetting decision on their part.”  Peggy says that the current negotiations should be an opportunity for MFT to do something in the spirit of the MUID agreement.  Emma says that MFT’s refusal to designate the MUID schools as new sites happened in the Contract Administration committee where “we” decide new program status, and that she would be happy to write a summary of exactly what happened for Peggy. 

Pam says that the “over-arching” thing that we are trying to achieve is interview and select in all schools, but if that really doesn’t work out, then the district could expand the number of interview and select sites, which would be in alignment with what Peggy was suggesting.  Pam also says that there may be an opening to use the Indian Preference Law to have a broader protection of teachers in the MUID schools and Emma says that she will look into it.

Chris says that we should have a values statement about improved diversity of the teacher pool.  Pam mentions that there is something like that is the contract, but Chris says that he is more interested in something that is on the table as a values statement as the negotiations unfold.  Lydia says that it is not her goal to just to have a more diverse teaching force, that there are teachers of color out there who are not good teachers.  Chris asks her if her goal then is to have an older and whiter teaching force. Lydia clarifies that her goal is not to just focus on diversity.

Emma says that this should be a conversation with HR as well, because the thing that did the most for teacher diversity in the district was the CUE program, Coalition for Urban Educators.  Emma says that improving the diversity of the teacher pool can be more about specific initiatives rather than contract language.  Emma says that the percentage of minority teachers hasn’t changed, just the absolute number, because the total number of teachers has decreased.  Chris points out that while this has happened, the diversity of the student body has increased.

Emma says that one of the issues that MFT put on the table right away was realignment and that one of the interests that “we” have talked about with respect to realignment is the district’s interest in maintaining a diverse workforce. Tom says that there might be common ground between the realignment discussion and site selection of teachers. Mauri says that realignment also works towards diversifying the teaching ranks.

Mauri says that she is a teacher who went through CUE, but she doesn’t see how diversity is not a contract issue, in part because “we” are not in a position to hire anyone.  Emma says that the last CUE program they did was for special education, and that they could anticipate doing one for math and science teachers.  Emma suggests that they could think about other ways of getting more diverse teachers and she says that she “has all kinds of wild ideas about this”.

Alan Giles says that negotiations have a drop-dead date, which he thinks is January 15, and that there is a penalty if the contract is not signed by then.  Emma says that she heard that there was a proposal in the legislature for a $35 per student incentive if districts completed their contracts by September 1.  Emma says that the administration’s goal is September 5.

Pam changes gears a bit and says that she wants to know what the district’s strategy is in the negotiations, but it’s not at all clear from the outside what the strategy is.  She also says that she is interested in attending negotiations (Chris and Tom say they are interested too) and that she wants to know Emma’s perspective on that.

Emma says that Rob has asked her to help him close the negotiations because he thinks teachers feel constrained by the presence of visitors. Emma said that she denied this request of Rob’s by saying that she didn’t want to declare the negotiations in mediation for the purpose of closing the sessions.  Emma says that MFT cold unilaterally request mediation status of the negotiations, which would close the negotiations to outsiders.

Emma says that she doesn’t think it is the best practice for non-negotiators from the administration or the Board to come to the negotiations.  Emma says that she thinks that this creates the impression that “you” don’t have confidence in “your” chief negotiator.  She says that it is not a recommended practice, but the truth is that she doesn’t mind.

Pam says that she thinks the contract is a psychological battle.  Pam says that she is interested in Board members to dropping by to make a point about how serious they are.  Peggy says that if Board members were to go to negotiations, they would have to work hard to keep their mouths shut.

Emma says that Pam’s question about strategy is harder to answer because she is not sure she can describe what the strategy is.  Emma says that the negotiation teams are trying to have a rational, thoughtful discussion about some very difficult issues.  Emma says that the teachers feel the pressure from the Board and the community and that the teachers are hurt and angry.  Emma says that the process may eventually go to traditional bargaining, and that going through the process of thoughtfully discussing these issues before it moves to “yelling at each other” may be of some benefit.  Emma says that the strategy will emerge organically as things go on.  Emma says that a lot of it is about relationships, she says that the district and teachers have a long-standing collaborative relationship.

Emma makes a crack about Rob, but Chris comes back and says that Rob is not responsible for the “fat, ugly” contract that we have.  Chris says that it was all the years of cooperation and dancing with each other and relationship building with Louise that got us to a 287 page contract.  Chris says that he hears that something fundamentally different has to happen this year, but he’s not yet feeling that is happening. Chris says he sees an incremental approach and that he fears that we are going to “soft foot” it so much that the district won’t be able to be successful in their goals.  Chris says that we are not going to achieve our goals without a clear-cut focused strategy.  Emma says that she is open to suggestions.  Chris says when he hears about traditional bargaining  he sort of yearns for it up front because he thinks that the Board should have gone public with a much stronger stand, as there is widespread public support to make something happen this year.

Mauri say that what is different this year, from a teacher perspective, is that the public perception is different.  She says that the teacher ranks are more divided this year than she has ever seen in her eleven years. She thinks that the only thing that could unite teachers this year is if the district decided to play hardball. Mauri says that she doesn’t disagree with Chris, but what she hears in internal teacher chatter is that teachers are so intimidated by the public, that the district looks like their best friend.  She says that the public who are interested in the negotiations are seen as pit bulls straining at a leash, wanting to attack, but being held back by the district.

Pam says that if this is the situation, she thinks that the district has to make the argument to the teachers to do the right thing.  Pam says that this is an opportunity for teachers to “announce a new day for the teacher corps in this city”.  Pam says that they have to appeal to the teachers to be educational leaders, that teachers should leave behind an outmoded way of doing things and move with the community and board and administration to a new way of doing things.

Emma says that they have slogans that they have trained on as a negotiation team and that the message that Pam described is the central message. Emma says that this helps her articulate what the strategy is actually, that they are trying to appeal to the highest instincts of those they are negotiating with, asking them to lead on this issue.  However, Emma says that this sort of argument is completely missed by Rob.  She says that she doesn’t think Rob even has it in him to even hear that message.

Bill mentions the January deadline date is something that can slip up on us real fast, and that in negotiations, time is the most powerful element for both sides.  Bill says that teachers are looking at their own self interests, like benefits, which could be lost, and that there is some common interest in delaying and playing the “chicken game” and that it is in nobody’s interest to solve this now.  Bill says that the teachers are not feeling the pressure.  He thinks that teachers believe that if the negotiations go into the fall, there will be more pressure on the administration.  Bill says that we have got to get into the mindset of waiting it out.  Bill says that the administration needs to get into the mindset of speaking to the higher ground even when “our nerves are being tested”.

Emma says that what little they were able to accomplish in negotiations last time was accomplished in the final hour of negotiations.

Pam reminds the group that thy need to conclude this meeting and that they have another discussion about negotiations next week.

Tom throws in a final comment saying that the district needs to demonstrate that it is serious about change in part by making big changes at the district, such as things with the principals.  Tom says that what the administration is saying and what the administration is doing might be seen as two different things.  Emma acknowledges this point, noting the new evaluation system for the principals.

The meeting is adjourned.