For the state to wade into the acrimonious dispute between the Douglas County School District and its teachers — as the teachers’ union has requested — would serve no public interest and would violate the state constitution’s local-control mandate, attorneys for the school district contend.
The attorneys’ letter Friday to the Department of Labor and Employment is in response to a June 21 request by unions representing teachers and classified employees — including cooks, custodians, secretaries and classroom aides — for the state to intervene.
Although the contract with its teachers and classified employees expired June 30, the district’s attorneys contend that intervention is unnecessary because 99 percent of the 2,979 teachers have already signed “individual employment contracts.”
“Indeed, merely ordering that the parties engage in voluntary arbitration, mediation or conciliation would unconstitutionally interfere with the district’s ability to plan, prepare and budget for the 2012-13 school year,” the letter states.
At a special meeting Tuesday, the board approved a 1 percent pay hike and a 1 percent signing bonus for teachers who had signed the agreement by June 15. The teachers had asked for a 3 percent raise.
The teachers’ union argues that those individual agreements were signed under duress.
In June, Superintendent Elizabeth Fagen notified teachers that if they didn’t sign by June 15, the district would assume they were not returning to work in the fall.
In requests to the Labor Department, representatives of the two unions stated concerns that had nothing to do with pay.
The attorneys took special issue with the district’s desire to approve all communications between the union and its members.
“This is so patently contrary to democratic notions of free speech, as well as representing a blatant effort to control the employees’ own organization, that the very proposal evidences bad faith,” they said.
In addition, the district’s proposal to strip the union of its status as the exclusive bargaining agent for teachers “would invite the School District to discriminate among teachers in their terms and conditions of employment, based purely upon which teachers’ association, if any, they opt to join. It suggests the possibility of the formation of different classes of teachers,” the letter argued.
The district and the unions have engaged in more than 100 hours of negotiations. Discussions between teachers and district representatives have been public, but the final say on proposals and counterproposals has remained with district board members, who generally have not attended negotiations.
Bill Thoennes, spokesman for the Department of Labor, said the state has been asked to intervene in school-district labor disputes 10 times in the past 20 years. The state denied all but two requests: In 1998, the state intervened in Pueblo schools, and in 1994, it did the same in Denver Public Schools.
Thoennes said with Douglas County’s response in hand, the department could make a decision in the case in a week.
Karen Augé: 303-954-1733, kauge@denverpost.com or
1%
Pay increase for Douglas County teachers approved by the school board
1%
Signing bonus for teachers who signed “individual employment agreements” by June 15
3%
Pay increase sought by the teachers union
