After more than 130 days of teaching without a contract, educators from Sheridan School District and the local teachers union crowded together late Wednesday afternoon under a darkening sky to demand their district leaders reinstate their contract and recognize the union’s full bargaining power.
“We are here today because this is not just a contract dispute,” Sheridan Education Association President Kate Biester told a group of about 100 people outside the district’s administration building in Englewood. “This is a direct threat to the stability and quality of our schools. It is nothing less than union busting, and if you try to say otherwise, you’re wrong. We have no protections and we have no assurances that the district will operate in good faith, and we are here to demand that good faith.”
Several years of contentious negotiations soured into a bitter bargaining cycle this year, resulting in an expired contract and, consequently, the district no longer recognizing the union’s right to negotiate.
The battle in the small Denver metro district, which educates many students from low-income families, is the latest between Colorado union members and district heads trying to hammer out contracts. Earlier this year, hundreds of Colorado Springs teachers went on strike after a Colorado Springs School District 11 board decision to let a decades-long master agreement with the Colorado Springs Education Association expire.
Tensions have continued mounting, with the union presenting the district and board a petition in September calling for them to reinstate their contract and the district no longer pulling union dues out of educators’ checks and instead refunding members.
On Wednesday, those tensions erupted across the band of people sprawled across the district lawn as teachers, community members, elected officials and representatives from other unions broke out in a litany of chants. “Union busting is disgusting,” they shouted, followed by “Sheridan District hear our call. Union rights belong to all.” Some waved signs lit up with Christmas lights. One read, “Union Busters make the Naughty List!”
The union also on Wednesday filed an official notice of a labor dispute with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to chronicle what Biester calls unfair labor practices and to inform the district “that we are not giving up and going down quietly.”
This most recent scuffle in Sheridan — which is also grappling with high teacher turnover and plummeting student enrollment — dates to the spring when union and district representatives began meeting at the bargaining table. The initial conversations were difficult, Biester said, but she recalls making progress on parts of the contract that didn’t involve teacher pay.
Negotiations devolved in the following months. The union and district reached an impasse over pay at the end of May and later accused each other of dropping the ball in continuing negotiations.
The two sides can’t agree on how they arrived at their standstill nor do they see eye to eye on how to begin drawing up a master agreement.
Biester, who teaches social studies at Sheridan High School and SOAR Academy, said she called Superintendent Gionni Thompson in July and School Board President Karla Najera and left voicemails to tell them the union was ready to come back to the table and get their contract past the finish line. Biester said Thompson called her back a week later and informed her that the district’s attorney was out of town and a meeting would not be possible until August.
The contract expired July 31.
Union leaders entered an Aug. 12 meeting ready to “lay down our weapons” and prepared to accept the school district’s terms of a 1% cost of living bump and no additional raises, Biester said.
“We didn’t want to draw it out,” she said. “We didn’t see that they were going to budget at all. We said, ‘we know this is tough. We know we’re in tough times. We just want to move forward.’”
They were told that their contract had expired since their last conversation and that the district no longer recognized them as a bargaining unit, Biester said, adding that she did not formally sign any documents to extend the contract because she believed they were “operating on good faith.”
Thompson recounts the last several months differently. In a phone interview with The Sun, he said the union has “not engaged with us at all.” Thompson said the district proposed its final offer for a master agreement in June and still has yet to hear from the union on a counter offer with its idea of fair compensation. The district arranged four meetings with the union and a mediator over the summer, Thompson said. He alleges the union lagged in its communications and did not attend the first two meetings, prompting the district to cancel the other scheduled meetings so they would not have to continue spending taxpayer dollars on a mediator.
The district devised a memorandum of understanding in an attempt to forge a path forward toward negotiations, but the union ultimately declined it, citing conditions that were “extremely unilateral.” The union took one provision to mean any union activity could lead to termination.
“There will be no strike, picketing, picket line observance, work slowdown, or other concerted work-related activity by members of the association which impairs the classroom performance of the members of the association,” the district document stated. “Any person who engages in such actions may be subject to immediate discharge or other discipline.”
“I care so deeply for my kids and for this community and for my fellow teachers that it doesn’t feel like it’s the right path forward for our community to take rights away from our educators,” she told The Sun. “We have teachers who are students’ parents. How does this benefit our students to have teachers who do not have rights at the bargaining table, who do not have collaborative decision-making over their working conditions? Because we know teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.”
Biester wants the district to simply reinstate the master agreement that expired, saying the union is still willing to accept the district’s offer of a 1% cost of living increase, which she noted would still amount to a pay cut for many teachers when factoring in rising health insurance costs. Thompson, however, wants to press for a better deal.
“We want to start it from the beginning, go through it cover to cover, not reinstate something that was not working,” Thompson told The Sun, noting some policies that have been in place for decades no longer work for the district, such an inconsistency in how teachers earn raises.
Peter Morris, a UniServ director for the Front Range unit who supports the Sheridan union members, shot down the idea of a brand new contract, in part because it would take at least a year to see through. He also argues district leaders are in favor of a new contract so that they can develop an agreement “that would be much more favorable” for them and potentially remove provisions at their discretion.
Avoiding a strike “at all costs”
Without a contract in place, Thompson said the district has continued honoring the terms it pitched before the contract expired, giving teachers a 1% cost of living raise and additional pay to coaches and club sponsors while also ensuring no staff member has experienced any disruption to their employment.
Biester acknowledged the district has abided by much of the former contract, though she alleges there have been contract violations “with a range of severity.” She declined to comment on specifics.
“At the end of the day, there is uncertainty and it is all based on trust with building leadership,” she told The Sun. “It’s based on trust with district leadership and that trust has been very difficult to rebuild. Just because they haven’t made any serious violations yet does not protect any teacher, any educator in my district from future violations and that is what I’m seeking to reinstate, is stability.”
Without a binding contract, Thompson said the district has also worked to improve its pay scale, upping the salary for a beginner teacher from $56,000 to $60,000 and implementing a consistent pay boost of 1% for additional years of classroom experience. Teacher pay in his district has ranked among the lowest within districts in metro Denver, with the average teacher salary in Sheridan School District during the last school year amounting to $71,797, according to data from the state education department.
Meanwhile, Thompson said he is continuing to seek input from teachers on their salaries and benefits package for next year by forming a compensation and benefits advisory committee open to all staff.
“I think it’s important to hear their voice and to collaborate on it,” he told The Sun.
Thompson said the district has had to prioritize fixing its budget after former district leaders pulled money from reserves to put toward capital projects. The district is also top heavy with staff, he said, and his plan is to scale back through attrition by not replacing positions of employees who leave.
He said he is optimistic that next year, the district will have “full capacity to negotiate appropriately.”
Could a strike be on the horizon? Biester said she is determined to “avoid a strike at all costs.”
Meanwhile, students are left caught in the middle, she said.
“I know Sheridan students are already coming from backgrounds where they experience a lot of instability, and having up to or over 30% of their teachers leave them every year only further traumatizes and harms them,” Biester said. “And I guarantee you, and I will defend this forever, that they do not leave because of the children. Our children are great kids. They’re really good kids, but if you don’t see yourself as a professional with a path to the ability to support yourself and your family, you don’t feel that your expertise is taken seriously or that you are invested in to grow, to make things even better for our kids, people have to make tough decisions in order to protect their peace, protect their livelihoods.”