By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
On Monday night, representatives for the Hays USD 489 Board of Education — Lance Bickle and Greg Schwartz — met with negotiators for Hays National Education Association for the first time since the 2015-16 board convened for the first time earlier this month.
Board members Sarah Rankin and Luke Oborny were also in attendance.
While the meeting addressed several issues the most contentious issues of the evening are still undecided. Those issues include health insurance, sick leave accrual payout, hours teachers are required to work and the grievance policy for the district.
While health insurance is still open for discussion, negotiators said the information required to make a decision is still unavailable, with insurance rules preventing comparisons between providers.
Superintendent Dean Katt said changes for this year are unlikely to happen because of the limited time available between now and the beginning of the school year.
With insurance talk on hold, the amount of time a teacher is required to be on site before and after the end of the school day quickly became a point of contention between the negotiating teams.
“I think some of the concept was before (the school day begins) might be beneficial to students,” Schwartz said in response to increased teacher hours before and after the school day.
However, the HNEA disagreed with the addition of time to the day, citing a lack of interest and increased work for teachers without additional pay.
“Just from past practice asking students, I have offered to come in at 7:15 a.m.,” said Kathy Wagoner, co-chair of the HNEA team. “They don’t show up. They don’t show up until 7:45 a.m.”
“I always thought 30 minutes was reasonable,” she said.
It was also noted elementary school buildings are not open for the extra 10 minutes the board would like to have teachers in their classrooms and, if the extra time were to be put into teacher contracts, there would be an added cost — even if teachers do not receive extra compensation – from support staff in the building earlier and later in the day.
Sick leave accrual payouts were also a hot topic at the meeting.
HNEA sought answers from the board in order to pass information along to teachers who might be seeking to retire before the beginning of the year.
Overall, the teachers’ group appeared upset the district negotiators weren’t ready to discuss retirement benefits, noting the timeline for teacher retirement is short at this point and, if an agreement is reached too late in the summer, could cause a number of teachers to retire right before or after the school year has begun.
“That’s not our choice. That’s theirs,” Schwartz said. “The threat of mass retirement is not good-faith bargaining.”
Schwartz pointed out to the HNEA team that nothing can take the accrued time away from the teachers if the HNEA does not consent.
With so much room between the two groups, Katt suggested he could talk with HNEA negotiators outside of a regular meeting for options regarding grandfathering in teachers who could lose time if a limit was set in new contracts.
“Many of these people have worked for 15-20 years for the district and so should be grandfathered into payout of sick time,” Wagoner said.
In the last area of focus in the meeting, the HNEA asked the board for a counter proposal for a grievance policy that does not include mandatory binding arbitration.
Under the current system, Wagoner said, “We don’t have any due process.”
The HNEA wants the option to address grievances without the publicity that might come with a court action, while Bickle argued teachers and the board should have options when addressing teacher concerns and not be limited to one process.
The next negotiating session will be on Aug. 5 at 5 p.m.