Union walks out of board meeting

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Independent correspondent

GALLUP — The county public school district finally approved a calendar for the next school year, but not everyone was happy with it.

In fact, officials for the McKinley Federation of United School Employees were so upset at the approval that they walked out of the meeting and later questioned the legality of the school board’s action.

Geneieve Jackson, the chairperson for the Gallup-McKinley County School Board, was one of the school board members to approve the calendar, but she admitted that it “bothered” her that the union had not signed off on the calendar. In the end, she said it needed to be approved so that contracts could be signed for the next school year.

Annie Descheny, another board member, said she was also not comfortable with the situation, but she voted to reject the proposed calendar. “I would like to see people work together,” she said.

Superintendent Ray Arsenault said after the meeting that the district really had no choice because the calendar for the next year had to be approved since the district had to prepare for the next school year.

As for the union, it’s president, Bryan Bernard, compared what the school board did on Monday to someone who writes a bad check.

“You can do it, but it’s not legal,” he said.

This was not supposed to happen this way. The school board tabled approval of the calendar during the past two meetings after Arsenault had told them that state law requires that the calendar be “negotiated” between the union and the school district.

After the meeting on Monday, Arsenault said he checked with the district’s attorney and discovered that the calendar did not have to be negotiated and that it was a “managerial right.”

Bernard disagreed but gave no indication what steps, if any, the union planned to take in the future.

Unions officials did sit down during the past month with Esther Macias, the district’s assistant superintendent, to agree on a calendar. Bernard said at the end of the last meeting, the union was prepared to “tentatively agree” on that calendar but Macias said she did not feel she had that authority, according to Bernard.

In any case, the calendar that was presented to the board on Monday was not the same one the union had seen at its last meeting, and Bernard expressed frustration, pointing out that it was the district — and not the union — that continued to delay discussions dealing with the calendar and other items that were supposed to be negotiated with the union.

The walkout Monday was the first time that Bernard, who has headed the union for more than six years, has walked out of a board meeting. “I’ve been thrown out of the central offices before, but I have never walked out of a board meeting,” he said.

This is even more amazing considering the fact that until this year, the union and the school district had been at each other’s throats since then superintendent Karen White and many of the people in the central office wanted nothing to do with the union. In the past year, however, the present school board has gone out of its way to show support for the union.

So why the problems?

Bernard said he feels that there are still a couple of people working in the central office who continue to harbor the same sentiments about the union as they did under White and this is causing problems with the relationship between the union and the school district.

Iris Robertson, a parent who was on the calendar committee, told the school board the calendar that was approved was the result of evaluating more than 2,000 survey forms that were submitted. One of the things that the committee took into consideration was not to have the schedule broken up as it was this year because it forced teachers to have to teach things again after students had been away.

“(This calendar is) not going to make everyone happy,” she said, adding that in the end, the committee made its decisions “on what would be best for the kids in the district.”

This calendar is a big departure from the one from this year.

For example, there are no half-day Fridays or full days for teacher development training. That will take place after school hours.

Parent/teacher conferences will he held on one day for all of the schools so that parents with a student in elementary and high school would only have to take one day off instead of two or three.

Report cards will be given out to parents on these parent/teacher conference days. If a parent can’t make it, the parent would have to call the school and make an appointment as to when they could come by and meet the teacher and pick up the card.

Holidays would be held on national holidays only, which means that if a national holiday was on a Wednesday, school would not be in session that day. Each nine-week period will consist of 45 instructional days which means that the first semester will end on Jan. 8.