Kansas lawmakers take up bills on teacher contract negotiations

Lawmakers are weighing two separate bills that would overhaul contract negotiations between teachers and school districts.

One has the backing of the state’s largest teachers union and the majority of school boards. The other has the backing of a Wichita-based think tank.

HB 2034 would revise the state’s professional negotiations act so that the only items that districts are required to negotiate with teachers unions would be salary, wages and work hours. Other items – such as overtime pay, sick leave and vacation time – would be open to negotiation only if both sides agree.

Dave Trabert, president of the Kansas Policy Institute, a Wichita-based think tank, pressed lawmakers to support this bill at a hearing of the House Education Committee on Wednesday.

He was the only person to do so.

SB 136 would allow unions and districts to each choose up to five items on a list of 30 to negotiate even if the other side opposes and to negotiate on an unlimited number of items if both agree. It has the backing of the Kansas Association of School Boards, the United School Administrators of Kansas and the Kansas National Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, which crafted the legislation after two years of negotiation.

“The only way to make sure both sides get their interests addressed is to have a mandatory list,” said Mark Desetti, legislative director for the KNEA, contending that the other bill would stifle negotiations by allowing either side to opt out of an item.

Trabert said his bill is necessary despite the opposition of the state’s school boards. He contended that the other bill represents a compromise but that his bill represents what school boards and superintendents actually want.

“Yes, they agreed to a compromise. But as they said, neither side got what they wanted,” Trabert said about the school boards’ negotiation with the union. “It’s a compromise. And what that compromise does is it restricts districts’ ability to make student-centered decisions.”

Trabert was a member of a state commission on school spending. He and three other members signed a minority report that included the bill based on an early draft of legislation the Association of School Boards had proposed. He said his bill represented what the association actually wanted and that it had approached the commission to support it last year.

Mark Tallman, the school board association’s associate executive director, disagreed.

“We presented to the commission that this was an issue that we believed they would be looking at ... and their hope was that we would find a compromise (with the union),” Tallman said after the hearing.

“All I can say is our board of directors was satisfied with this compromise. It does not include everything we wanted. That’s kind of the nature of compromise,” Tallman said.

Tallman introduced a House version of the compromise bill his organization supports at the hearing Wednesday.

Trabert said several superintendents supported his bill but would not come forward for fear of intimidation.

Democratic lawmakers expressed doubts about that. Trabert would not name them and said he was unsure of the number.

Rep. Ron Highland, R-Wamego, would not say which bill he preferred.

“I’m going to have to look at both of them side by side,” he said. “I may not work either one of them. I need to look at what the law is right now and why all this fuss all of a sudden.”

The current negotiations law has been in place for four decades.

Rep. Valdenia Winn, D-Kansas City, noted that the organizations opposing Trabert’s bill represented the majority of the people involved in the negotiation process. She pressed Trabert about how he could claim to speak for superintendents when the organization that represents superintendents was speaking against the bill.

“So, honestly, you can’t speak for those groups because you don’t represent those groups,” she said.

Rep. Jerry Lunn, R-Overland Park, suggested the negotiation process between the school districts and teachers unions needs to be more adversarial.

“It sounds like everybody’s moving to get on the same page, and I’m not sure how much negotiation takes place in that approach,” he said.

Several Republican lawmakers voiced concerns that some administrators are either current or former members of the teachers union. Desetti told the committee that’s because all of them are former teachers.

Rep. Sue Boldra, R-Fort Hays, said the purpose of the negotiations is to build consensus.

“The bottom line is we’re all working for children here. It shouldn’t be adversarial,” she said.

Rep. Carolyn Bridges, D-Wichita, a retired principal, said a shift to more amicable negotiations in recent years had benefited the Wichita school district, because it allows both administrators and teachers to identify the needs facing the district.

This story was originally published February 4, 2015 at 4:41 PM.