[W]hile holding back from any commitment to strike, Burlington teachers have rejected the school board’s decision to impose contract conditions on them.
Teachers voted Tuesday night not to accept the board’s terms and are asking for negotiations to continue, according to Fran Brock, president of the Burlington Education Association. She said the vote was unanimous.
“They are dictating to us what is going to happen to our salaries, tuition reimbursement, personal days,” Brock said in an interview. “It damages the community, it damages the schools. This autocratic action is a sign that they are trying to bust the union. That is why we aren’t accepting it. We want them to come back to the table and negotiate a contract.”
The board and teachers had been negotiating a one-year contract for nearly a year.
Last week the union rejected the school board’s final offer, which fell short of a 3.25 percent hike in salary that a fact finder had recommended. The board then voted to impose a contract that will end the last day of August 2017.
“It was the fastest any board has ever imposed a contract. They imposed it the first day they were able to,” said Darren Allen, communications director for the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association.
Thirty days after the fact-finding report was delivered to the two sides, the board had the option to impose contract terms, and teachers have the option to strike in response.
The board said in a letter to teachers that it could not give them everything they wanted without finding an additional $400,000 through cuts or running a deficit due to a loss of federal funds and the need to stay within an allowable growth imposed by the Legislature.
“Balancing the current budget required the use of one-time surplus funds along with painful cuts that affected all aspects of school district operations — of which more than a third came from Central Administration,” the letter states.
The school board said it “reluctantly” voted 10 to 1 with one abstention last week to impose the one-year working conditions.
Board Chair Mark Porter could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
The teachers challenged the claim that the district doesn’t have the money. “The core of the problem is that we need to see a detailed budget from the Burlington School District. The budget on the website is incomplete and vague. It doesn’t describe where all the money is allocated,” said Brock.
“They are a public entity. Their budget should be public,” she added.
More specifically, the teachers think money wrongly went to consultants and legal fees. “We are not suggesting more money is needed. We are suggesting the way it has been allocated is problematic,” Brock said.
In the past, Brock said, budgets were more detailed down to the number of paper clips that were purchased.
“Burlington teachers haven’t had a strike since 1979,” she said. “When we have more detailed budgets then we can see where the money is and we have negotiated appropriately.”