Getting to yes in your district’s teacher contract negotiations

On Board Online • November 19, 2012

By Howard Smith

In gearing up for teacher contract negotiations, school boards often form negotiating positions by defining a list of “gotta haves.” After the give-and-take of the negotiation process, board members can be disappointed when the agreement that they are asked to approve does not match their expectations. The key to a negotiations process that is successful and satisfies your board’s goals is working with your negotiator to develop a well-informed set of expectations.

Begin by reviewing relevant data. While comparisons with other school districts in the region are important, they tempt board members to cherry pick what they consider to be the best features of the other contracts with the unrealistic expectation that they can somehow be assembled into a single, substantially more management-friendly contract. Expanding the kind of data you consult will open new options. For example, it has become increasingly apparent to the general public that there is a growing gap between the benefits and salary guarantees offered by teacher contracts and the declining benefits packages and lack of salary guarantees for employees in other sectors. Seek salary and benefits data for other sectors, such as major private and government employers in the region. Such data are starting to make their way into fact-finding opinions that are issued when negotiations deadlock.

Another example of data that expands options is a cost analysis of every provision in the teacher contract that must be supported by the school budget. Teacher contracts reflect the cumulative process of negotiations over decades. Historically, school boards have tended to be willing to grant what seem like minor concessions each time the contract has been renegotiated in order to achieve an agreement. Often, these concessions were considered to be a way to direct money to the bargaining unit other than through the salary structure and, therefore, the lesser of two evils. Many of these provisions benefitted only a small subgroup of teachers for reasons related to internal union politics at the time. These “nickels and dimes” add up. They siphon off money that could be redirected towards covering things that both the teachers and the district care about, like TRS contribution rate increases, health insurance premium increases, and automatic salary step movement that affect the majority of teachers. 

Now you’re close to setting goals and parameters for negotiations. Be sure to heed the sage advice of Roger Fisher and William Ury in their updated edition of Getting to Yes: Focus on interests, not positions. Positions, once stated for the record, are difficult to moderate during the course of negotiations. They can have the effect of a Grover Norquist-style pledge in setting the stage for gridlock. Try instead to frame desired outcomes as goals to be achieved. This will give your negotiators the ability to pursue multiple ways of achieving the desired outcomes (another of Fisher and Ury’s elements).

To give your negotiator broad goals to work with, a school board might establish that the agreement:

• Must be fiscally responsible in the context of the variables that affect the revenue available to fund a teachers contract.
• Cannot adversely affect the capacity of the district to support the current level of programs and services for students.
• Must reflect some restructuring in a manner designed to address identified disparities between compensation models in teachers contracts and compensation models for employees in other sectors.

For each goal, set a parameter that reflects your expectations. For instance, a parameter for a fiscal responsibility goal might be that the net cost of the agreement must not require more revenue than is available to the district under the provisions of the state tax cap. Another fiscal parameter might be that the net cost of the agreement cannot exceed the cost of simply rolling the existing agreement forward under the provisions of the Triborough Amendment to the Taylor Law. A parameter regarding impact on programs and services might be that the agreement cannot be funded in part by teacher layoffs. A parameter regarding restructuring might be that the agreement must include provisions that reduce the cost impact of automatic salary and stipend increases and/or include provisions for greater accountability as a prerequisite for salary and stipend increases.

This approach is quite different than the traditional model of going into negotiations with extreme positions in search of compromise. Instead, your negotiator can be completely transparent with regard to both the goals and the parameters that have been established by the school board. If well-constructed, they will be stated in terms that are hard to argue with.

Consequently, teacher negotiators can be invited to engage in a problem-solving exercise designed to address both teachers’ union and board goals and parameters.

Engaging people in the process of achieving mutually acknowledged goals creates a very different dynamic from going into negotiations armed only with lowball positions that require the other party to read between the lines in order to determine what the goals really are.

You have now given your negotiator the ability to satisfy your goals in creative ways. For instance, a goal of addressing disparities in the salary structure and issues with automatic step increases might be addressed by an agreement to insert some “half steps” between existing steps on the salary schedule. The cost of lane movement might be reduced by consolidating lanes and establishing more criteria for lane movement. There may also be an opportunity to create performance-based criteria for longevity stipend increases.

It’s in the interest of all parties to break away from old patterns of negotiating that too often have led to protracted talks that extend beyond the expiration date of the teachers’ contract. Having teachers work under an expired contract does not necessarily lead to an outcome substantially different than what could have been achieved by a timely successor agreement.  By devoting sufficient time to developing data-driven goals and parameters in advance of formal negotiations, school boards can help their negotiators to be more effective and increase the likelihood of achieving the proverbial win-win outcome.

Howard Smith is superintendent for the Public Schools of the Tarrytowns in Westchester County and has served as a school superintendent in New York State for the past 25 years. He recently was a conference presenter on the subject of negotiations for the New York State Council of School Superintendents.