Board turns down MSEA request

PALMER -- A day after the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board meeting where Mat-Su Education Association president Barbara Morris requested the negotiation be re-opened, the board released a statement reaffirming its commitment to move forward with the labor arbitration process, scheduled for November.

"The Board does not feel there is enough change from the parties' last financial position to allow resolution without the services of a professional arbitrator. The difference between the district's proposal and the union's position is $3.2 million in the first year alone," read the statement. The board said it thinks

an outside party will be able to help find compromises to bring that

difference down.

"Obviously we are really disappointed," Morris said. "We are questioning if the board is really helping the people in the district, or if it is more of a subservient position to the school district."

The request to open negotiations without the arbitrator came with a number of public statements made by teachers at the board meeting; many of these statements personally attacked chief school administrator Bob Doyle, the administration as a whole, and its ability to negotiate and run a school district.

"I would say we've had no meaningful conversations about negotiations with the district [this year]," Morris said. "We haven't felt any desire from the district to talk about the issues."

While both parties agreed last spring to go into arbitration, Morris said MSEA is now willing to discuss nearly half of the articles in the contract that are not in dispute, and hoped that would lead to more conversations about the harder issues. She would not give any more details on what compromises she and the association would be willing to make.

Morris also said she feels the district has not been going about the negotiations in good faith.

Chief school administrator Bob Doyle disagrees.

"Good faith doesn't mean one side or the other says 'yes,'" Doyle said. "Both parties agreed to arbitration … we haven't been able to come to middle ground, now it is time for a third party."

Doyle also said he didn't think the way the school board meeting on Wednesday went was the most effective way to handle the contract negotiations.

"I think our children, parents and community expects us to solve our problems in a reasonable fashion," he said. "The process we saw Wednesday night was not a reasonable process, it doesn't allow both sides to be told, arbitration does."

Morris said she thought support from teachers at the meeting would help the board realize the importance of moving forward with negotiations in order to get through the process quicker and get back to focusing on student learning. Morris also expressed concerns with the administration's integrity.

"We don't believe the money numbers," Morris said. She said she wonders why there is money for new furniture and trucks for the administration, but no money available for the teachers.

"When there is a project that the administration wants to move forward on, there's money," she said.

Doyle said the teachers' $3,000 increase in pay last year was first intended to be done during a three-year period, and the administration rolled the amount into one lump sum. Morris, who said she had never heard anything about the raise being a rolled amount, said that even with the yearly raise, increased health costs have made paychecks less, not more.

"My personal paycheck is about $100 less a month than last year," Morris said. She would like to see some of the extra money the district has received from the sudden increase in student enrollment not only go into hiring more teachers, but also increasing the amount of money the district pays the teachers, and an increase in what the district pays into health insurance.

Doyle said he can't make all of these requests happen because there just isn't enough money, and hopes arbitration will help the groups find middle ground.

"If we take money from increased enrollment and increase [paychecks], we would have even larger classroom sizes," Doyle said, because the money wouldn't be spend on more teachers. "There is more to a school district than salaries and increases," he said.

Doyle said these kind of disagreements are the exact reason why arbitration is the next step.

"I do think a third party carries weight," he said. "It's advisory, but it carries weight."

With arbitration a couple months away, Morris said she and the association are collecting evidence to support their claim of the administration's lack of integrity, and to show why the requests of the association are reasonable. Once the arbitration process is over, Morris said, the real negotiation process will begin. Morris said she hopes a compromise can be made, but if the district is not working in good faith, a strike at that time is possible.

"Is it being discussed? Absolutely. Are our members asking 'when are we going?' Absolutely. Is it our desire? No. But can we do it? Yes," Morris said.