Snowflake Schools: Failure to Communicate

One of the ironies of the human condition is that our trying to make things easier often makes things more difficult.  With the hectic schedules everybody keeps, it’s not surprising that volunteer school board members would look for ways to spend fewer hours doing school work and seek to delegate some of their more time-consuming tasks.  The problem is that one of the largest time consumers is also one of the most important, especially to teachers—negotiating a new contract.  Regardless of teacher priorities, however, many school boards have chosen not to negotiate directly with their teachers, instead relying on law firms.  The boards send out their hired hands with their proposals to meet with the teachers and then hear how things went at the next board meeting in a closed session.  In some school districts using this system, the board members never have any direct interaction with the teachers at all.   Once again, my old school system, Hinsdale Township High School District #86, has provided an example of why this “simpler” method has had the unintended consequence of making things worse, as the recent news that a federal mediator is being brought in to assist with the current contract negotiations shows.  “What we’ve got here…is failure to communicate.”

For those of you new to this blog, I was a teacher in the English Department and union activist for twenty-five years at one of District #86’s two high schools, Hinsdale South.  I participated in eight contract negotiations there, most recently as chief spokesperson for the teachers on their 2006-2010 contract.  So I’m not intentionally picking on this district; it’s simply that I have the most knowledge of how things work in District #86, not to mention having friends and colleagues who still work there. 

For all the negotiations sessions in which I participated, we used the same procedure:  The Hinsdale High School Teachers Association (HHSTA), the union which is the exclusive bargaining representative for the 370+ teachers and to which over 98% of all teachers belong, would select three member teachers from each of the two high schools to act as negotiators, one of whom would be designated chief spokesperson.  Additionally, the two building union presidents and the Uniserv Director from the Illinois Education Association (IEA, the state organization with which the HHSTA is affiliated) could participate in bargaining sessions.  District #86’s bargaining team was made up of three of the seven board members, as well as the superintendent, human resources head, and the chief financial officer from the administrative office.  Finally, one lawyer hired by the district would act as the board’s spokesperson. 

Any of those participants could—and did—participate in the many discussions that each negotiations session would entail.  That was especially true when we agreed to use the “Interest-Based” style of negotiating in which members of each side provide reasons why specific issues are important to them, as well as providing rationales as to where the interests of the other side coincide with their proposals.  All participants are required to join in the “brainstorming solutions” discussions which this technique uses.  Needless to say, those interactions can get pretty lively, but teachers and board members do learn each other’s perspectives.  If nothing else, recognizing that the other side does have good reasons for their requests can spark a scintilla of understanding which can ignite the compromises any negotiations will require.

But with the 2010 contract negotiations, the school board determined that its members would no longer sit down with the teacher representatives.  Instead, only lawyers and administrators met directly with the teachers. The entire board, then, negotiated from afar, hearing what had gone on at the talks (in closed sessions either prior to or at the end of regular school board meetings) and telling its lawyers and administrators what it would or wouldn’t accept.  Basically the dynamic of being able to present issues directly to the decision makers for the other side and to discuss them face-to-face was lost since one side’s ultimate authorities, the seven board members elected by the community to represent them, no longer heard much, if anything, first hand from the teachers.

Having retired in 2012, I’m not as in-the-know about the current negotiations process as the new board majority members (President Rick Skoda, Claudia Manley, Ed Corcoran, and Victor Casini) who took over in 2013 seem intent on doing everything differently than in past years.  This time, the two sides (the HHSTA and the board) have not agreed to any negotiations ground rules (the procedures both sides will follow for the negotiations process, such as only issuing joint press releases, for example) and have already requested a federal mediator.  So while a board member or two might have attended the early sessions, my understanding is that they did not directly communicate with any teachers (their lawyers did all the talking) and now the two sides will gather in different rooms while the federal mediator confers with each group separately, going back and forth, presenting proposals to one side at a time.

This disconnect is bad for the schools.  As someone who discussed all kinds of issues with various school board members over the years, I believe these exchanges had much value for all parties.  By relying totally on second-hand information from administrators on basic school functioning at regular board meetings, and then lawyers or mediators for contract talks, school board members lose touch with the people who really run the schools, the teachers.  Administrators might institute board policies, make the recommendations for hiring,  get paid more, and receive more attention from the press; but everybody should realize that the teachers are the most important school officials to the constituency who should be everyone’s top priority—students (who, oddly enough, grow up to be adult community members one day). 

How many current students will wax poetic in discussing how the debate over school board policy 2:225, which would give board members unfettered access to student files, changed their lives for the better?  Will Skoda’s speaking style or Corcoran’s explanations of teacher salaries be the memories South and Central seniors take with them when they graduate this year?  I’d guess not.  Conversely, ask them if they were positively influenced by Mal Bauer, Richard Doherty, Keri Cazzato, Jim Kelly, Pamn Baker, Walter Downing, Kristin Wimsatt,  Brian Thelen, and/or Dick Palzer (and that’s just a sampling over the years from one department at one school!); and you will get a deluge of testimonials about life-altering experiences.  (To illustrate this, I would ask any current student, graduate, and/or parent reading this to write a line or two about a District #86 teacher who made a difference in your or your child’s life in the comments section at the end of this blog.)   Teachers are the single most important part of the school district; but District #86 board members, elected as caretakers for the district, do not speak directly with them about their contract, one of the most important parts of any teacher’s working life.  Does that make any sense?

What we need is more communication:  Dialogue, Discourse, Interaction, Conversations, Debates, Forums—whatever you want to call it; a frank exchange of ideas, statistics, opinions, and beliefs only opens the door to better understanding and agreements based on reasonable compromise.  If Ed Corcoran believes the teachers are overpaid and underworked, he needs to explain his rationale for that conviction openly and clearly instead of writing hollow-sounding letters to the Patch in which he claims to “respect our wonderful teaching…staff” at the same time he’s trying to convince the community that this highly respected staff makes too much money. (You can read that letter at http://hinsdale.patch.com/groups/schools/p/open-letter-d86-board-member-clarifies-teacher-compensation-details.)   He and Jeff Waterman (social studies teacher, chief spokesperson for the teachers, and a very smart person when it comes to finances) should be discussing what a reasonable salary schedule should look like from the perspective of fairness and affordability.  I know that Waterman (not to be confused with the South principal who is fleeing the district for Lyons Township) and the rest of the HHSTA team are willing to have that conversation.  I’m also certain that the teachers of District #86 have no problem explaining to anyone who will listen (especially board members) why what they do is valuable.  (Check out https://www.facebook.com/hhsta.org if you’d like to see the kinds of things District #86 teachers have accomplished.) 

But instead, the board has pushed for a new contract, through its hired hands, which would eliminate past practices that have been in place for decades.  It’s much easier to lob incendiary proposals at the other side when you don’t have to look the people affected by your extreme offers in the eyes.  This destructive negotiating tactic—which is in no way based on any financial crisis the board faces as evidenced by its surplus of over $20,000,000 and its decision to freeze next year’s tax levy—is shown in the board’s determination to make cuts in teacher compensation, which has led to mediation.  There is little real interaction between the two sides with mediation and it slows everything down as negotiations become an endurance contest to see which side will give first.  And everyone knows what the teachers’ last resort could be if pushed too far:  That’s right; the current trajectory is headed away from discussion and compromise towards a teachers’ strike.

This kind of positional, confrontational bargaining the school board currently employs, made easier by not talking directly to the teachers, is especially harmful in places where human interaction is the most important aspect of what employees do.  Teenagers will try the patience of saints; and although the students of District #86 are mostly great kids, they test their teachers’ people skills every single day.  Do the District #86 communities really believe that angering the entire staff with regressive proposals really serves the best interests of the children or the schools?  Are the majority of taxpayers in sync with Corcoran’s assertion that, “With the excellent work conditions and benefits teachers realized in District 86, the salary levels would be lowered substantially by market forces. Our salary and benefits should be lower than other districts due to the great parents and great students and excellent work environment/conditions - not to mention the prestige our teachers enjoy in the education community. There are large numbers of unemployed and highly qualified teachers, so it should be obvious to anyone that we should not be paying above market wages with taxpayer's hard earned money.”  (See the comments section of this Patch article for the source of this quote.)  Will the quality candidates assumed to be readily available want to come to a district when that is the belief system of the school board?  Can the teachers ignore that demeaning attitude and continue to push themselves and their students to excel when school board members believe that they are easily replaceable cogs in District #86’s educational machine?  

Before more irreparable damage is done to the way District #86 teachers view their employers and more employees escape to more reasonable systems, school board members should start talking to teachers.  Nobody is expecting them to sell out their principles or to accept teacher proposals blindly, but the least they can do is interact with the most important members of the school system.  “What we’ve got here…is failure to communicate.”  For those of you unfamiliar with that quote, it comes from the great Paul Newman movie, Cool Hand Luke (a two-minute clip from the film which includes that quote can be found here for you young people).   Here’s hoping that changes occur in how the school board communicates with its teachers so this film clip becomes less apt as a metaphor for how the board regards its teachers.

For more on ways school districts can function better, see http://www.snowflake-schools.com/.   And please remember to add your comments about Hinsdale South and Central teachers who positively influenced you or someone you know in the comments section below.