HARTFORD — The School Board approved a new, three-year contract with the district’s teachers at a meeting Tuesday evening that brought out 50 union members wearing union T-shirts and buttons saying “A Deal’s a Deal.”
Negotiators for the Hartford Education Association and the School Board agreed to terms on Jan. 12, after working on the contract through the fall.
Union members backed the contract by a vote of 133-1 on Jan. 23.
But the School Board took its time, discussing the contract in executive sessions, including for more than an hour Tuesday night with legal counsel. After last night’s vote, members said they wanted to review the contract language, which contains many changes, they said.
“We discussed those multiple times, just for clarification,” School Board member Jeremy Warren said after the meeting. “Collective bargaining agreements haven’t changed much in the past,” Warren said.
The delay was serious enough that the district had sent out letters of intent, a requirement in the old contract that told teachers that the district intended to hire them for the coming year, but that they were not bound to their old contract, leaving teachers free to move on.
And the union had filed a complaint with the Vermont Labor Relations Board, charging the board with regressive bargaining, for refusing to ratify an agreement, and with bargaining in bad faith. Those complaints are now moot.
“I don’t believe this situation is about bad intentions or anyone trying to take advantage of anyone else,” Doug Anton, a social studies teacher at Hartford High School and the lead negotiator for the union, said in a prepared statement during the meeting. “I think everyone involved cares about the district and is trying to do what they believe is right.”
“That being said, bargaining only works if both sides can rely on the agreements reached at the table as final and complete. Reopening or revising a fully negotiated and ratified agreement is not part of that process, and it is not something we are able to do,” Anton said. “Doing so would set a precedent that undermines how bargaining is meant to function.”
The contract had been negotiated in a thorough, collaborative process, Anton said, including many late-night sessions over dinner.
About 50 members of the union, which represents 254 Hartford teachers, turned out in red HEA shirts to urge the board to execute the contract. Jen Given, a Vermont NEA representative, also attended.
The customary process for a teacher contract is that negotiators for both sides meet and arrange an agreement that then goes to a vote of the wider membership, in this case the union members and the school board. If either party wants to reopen negotiations, they have to vote the deal down, Given said.
The board reached out to Anton to try to reopen negotiations, but without taking a vote. The Vermont NEA looked back through its records for 40 years and couldn’t find a similar instance of a school board not taking action on a contract, Given said.
“They made it clear that it’s not financial,” Anton said of the board’s hesitancy. “I get the feeling that it has to do with the increased safety language that we added.”
That language involves protecting teachers and creating a safe working environment, he said.
It didn’t help matters that the two board members who negotiated the contract, Kevin “Coach” Christie and Garrett Wilson, did not stand for reelection, though the contract would ordinarily have been approved weeks before Town Meeting Day.
All three of the district’s labor contracts are up for renewal this year, and the teacher contract, which covers the largest of the bargaining units, was ratified first. The challenge of handling all three contracts at once with only a five-member board that has two new members contributed to the delay, Warren said.
School Board Chairwoman Nancy Russell referred questions to Warren after the meeting, noting that he’s on the negotiating committee, and that she has a conflict of interest, since her daughter is a teacher in the district.
Warren is negotiating a contract with the district’s support staff, which includes paraprofessionals, custodians and maintenance workers. A contract with the district’s administrators is nearing completion, Warren said.
The teacher contract contains cost increases for the district of 4.5% in the first year and 4.6% and 4.7% in the second and third years, Anton said.
The district accounted for the first year’s increase in the $58.7 million budget approved by voters on March 3, Warren said.
The board voted unanimously to approve the contract, and expressed contrition.
“I’m very sorry you’ve had to wait this long for your contracts,” board member Daniel Schapira, a Quechee resident who was elected to the board on March 3, told the teachers after the vote. “I’m not the first person to say that teachers are vastly underpaid in this country. I’m sorry.”
The teachers applauded and union President Nichole Vielleux, a teacher at Dothan Brook School, got up and shook the hand of every board member and administrator.
Before Tuesday night’s vote, Anton expressed concern that the delay in ratifying the contract would harm Hartford’s ability to attract and retain teachers, an issue the contract’s terms are meant to address by providing stronger raises to experienced teachers.
But after the meeting he said he was “excited. Very happy with the outcome. I’m very happy we can move forward without bad blood.”
