[B]URLINGTON — There will be no school Tuesday as the city’s teacher strike continues for a fourth day even as the two sides say they will again meet with a third-party mediator.
At the same time, two Republican lawmakers are calling for the Legislature to consider again a proposal that would do away with a school board’s ability to impose working conditions on teachers, as well as a teacher union’s ability strike in response.
Rep. Kurt Wright, R-Burlington, says that strikes create animosity in the community. “It creates division,” Wright said. “It disrupts families, and it leaves scars behind in the community in its aftermath. We see that every time there’s a strike.”
Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said Burlington’s teacher strike is a harbinger of what’s to come around the state, pointing to negotiations in South Burlington that are teetering on the edge of a strike. The board has imposed contract terms on the teachers there.
“It is very important that you know here in Burlington, everything that happens here is similar to what will happen around the state,” Benning said at a news conference with Wright at City Hall on Monday.
In Burlington, the union and the school board said they would return to mediation Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. at the behest of Ira Lobel, the third-party mediator tasked with helping the two sides find resolution. Previous mediations last week failed to avert the current strike.
Wright said if the state took away the “nuclear option” of strikes and impositions, teacher contract negotiations would be less adversarial.
Though a Sunday rally in City Hall Park to support teachers was positive and peaceful, the Burlington Police Department has said it received reports of picketing teachers being harassed by passing drivers.
The windows of two homes displaying green “Support our Teachers” lawn signs were shot with what police believe was an air gun over the weekend. Deputy Chief Shawn Burke said police are investigating whether the vandalism was motivated by the teacher strike.
Another possibility police are investigating is whether the vandalism was motivated by race or anti-gay bias as one of the two homes had a “Black Lives Matter” sign and a sign expressing support for LGBTQ people in addition to the sign supporting teachers.
Superintendent Yaw Obeng said in a statement that the district and the board condemn such actions, and affirm teachers’ right to strike. “There is no place for any type of bullying or harassment in our community,” Obeng said.
Wright’s bill banning strikes and impositions failed by two votes in the House in 2015, but languished in committee last year. Now, Benning said he will introduce a similar bill in the Senate.
The difference between Wright’s previous legislation, and the identical bills the two lawmakers say they will introduce in the coming session, is that the new version would require negotiations to take place in public, unless both sides agree to keep the process secret.
Such a provision would force school boards and unions to make reasonable offers at the outset, or face an angry public, thereby increasing the odds of a quick and amicable resolution, Benning said.
Darren Allen, a spokesman for the Vermont NEA, said the proposal is unnecessary. In Vermont’s 50 years of collective bargaining for teacher contracts at the local level, roughly 5,000 contracts have settled with only two dozen impositions and roughly the same number of strikes, Allen said.
“What a strike does is ensure that there will be a settlement, that a contract will be reached,” Allen said.
That’s the problem with Wright and Benning’s proposal, said Sen. Chris Pearson, P-Chittenden. “There has to be an off ramp. Otherwise each side might want negotiations to continue on in perpetuity. That doesn’t seem wise,” Pearson said.
Benning said their proposal calls for a study committee to answer what happens when two sides can’t find resolution. Still, that’s putting “the cart before the horse,” Pearson said.
Pearson was among a group of nine senators and representatives who represent Burlington who issued a weekend statement calling on the board to lift its imposition and both sides to return to the bargaining table to end the strike.
Rep. Brian Cina, P-Burlington, who also signed the statement, said he agreed with Wright and Benning that the current model is too adversarial, pitting school board’s and taxpayers against teachers, which creates an unhealthy dynamic.
“The way collective bargaining is set up now, both sides use manipulative tactics. It’s structured to be a war,” said Cina, who served on the Burlington School Board prior to being elected to the House last year.
Cina said banning teacher strikes could undermine workers’ rights. Sen. Anthony Pollina, P/D-Washington, a longtime advocate for workers’ rights, echoed that concern.
“One has to see the effort to ban strikes as an attack on a fundamental right and an attempt to undermine the strength and very existence of unions,” Pollina said in a statement.
Despite differing on how best to move forward, Pollina and Benning both made reference to increased demands on teachers, who they said are now being asked to play a larger role than ever in addressing societal ills.
Wright said he isn’t sure his bill needs to answer how the two sides will reach a final agreement in order to be effective. He said there are 37 states that prohibit teacher strikes, many without binding arbitration or other mechanisms to force a final resolution when negotiations stall.
Vermont is the only New England state to allow teacher strikes, he said. In the other New England states, only Connecticut has binding arbitration, Wright said.
Allen, with the Vermont NEA, said he believes Gov. Phil Scott is on the union’s side when it comes to this issue, pointing to statements from the governor who responded to a reporter’s question last week by affirming his support for board impositions and teachers strikes.
However, Wright said that the governor’s staff has told him that if his bill were to reach the governor’s desk, Scott would give it serious consideration.
In a Monday statement from spokeswoman Rebecca Kelley, Scott described the strike in Burlington as a “symptom of a larger affordability challenge we face in Vermont,” linking it to school budgets that he said are growing faster than the economy, while student enrollment declines.
Scott said that while he has supported the right to impose terms and strike in the past, “the disruption and strain a strike places on students and parents is clear,” and he understands the concerns raised by Wright and Benning.
The governor affirmed what Wright said, adding that if the proposal passes the Legislature, “I’ll give it fair consideration.”
The district will continue to provide free lunches to students. For more information on where meals will be distributed, check out the district website.
“We know this strike is a strain on the community, and we are so appreciative that community members are giving up so much to support us,” said Burlington Education Association President Fran Brock.
“We are fighting to be heard and respected. We are fighting for the professional time we need to ensure the best education for the children of Burlington,” she added.
The Burlington School Board also issued a statement saying they look forward to the mediation and “reaching a multi-year contract agreement with the BEA that finds common ground on elementary school operations issues, salary and health care benefits that are in the best interests of our students.”
Still, in an earlier release, the board issued a litany of statements it said were meant to correct “misinformation” put out by the union, demonstrating the gulf that still exists between the two sides on basic facts are underlying their disagreement.
Members of the union have said previously that 64 of its members have resigned from the district in the last three years, and that many are leaving for nearby districts because of frustrations with how the district is managing instructors.
The board said the number of resignations is actually 44, and the reasons for their departures are more varied, including people who moved out of state or accepted promotions to administrative roles. Further, the overall turnover rate for the district is lower than the average for New England, according to the board.
Asked Monday morning if she was hopeful a second round of mediations would yield a compromise, Brock said, “Yes. I have to be.”
A moment later she added, “The fact that Mr. Lobel wants us back at the table means that he must see enough sort of jiggering that something can be worked out.”
