Education Week - February 6, 2013 - Special Report - S18

enue, like that of other school districts in the state, had depended
increasingly on the state money.
Fresh from attending a session
in which Montgomery County,
Md., officials made a presentation
on a financial process drawing on
input from employee associations,
Dallman floated the idea with
Stevenson and with David Thomas,
then the chairman of the Jefferson
County school board. Back in
Colorado, the three leaders won
board approval to pursue a similar
approach.
“The way we’d done bargaining
in the past really pitted groups
against each other,” Dallman says.
“This was a way we could come to
the table around common values.
And the common value chiefly was
student achievement.”
Two representatives each from
the district, the teachers’ union,
the school board, and groups for
administrators and classified staff
members attended the two-day
summit.
According to Jane Barnes, a
school board member from 2003
to 2011 who sat in on the proceedings, negotiators discussed cuts in
everything from transportation to
academic programs to compensation to athletics.

at $932 million. Among other
provisions, it:
• Cut some 200 positions, mainly
through attrition;
• Instituted two furlough days
and eliminated four professional-development days for
teachers;
• Set a 3 percent wage reduction
for teachers to match the
shorter year;
• Closed two schools; and
• Imposed new transportation
fees for parents.
As painful as those reductions
were, Jefferson County’s education
leaders say the alternatives might
have been worse, resulting in the
elimination of counselors’ jobs,
higher class sizes even in early
grades, and the decimation of arts
and music programs that would
have “taken the heart and soul
out of our schools,” in Stevenson’s
words.
Barnes says the process also
demonstrated unity in the face of
adversity.
“We didn’t go into nasty boardunion negotiations or air our
dirty laundry in public,” she
continues. “We came out of there
with a much deeper respect for
one another, and were able to
say collectively that this was the
best for the children of Jefferson
County. ... It was a great solution
to the situation we had at the
time.”
The process was used again in
2012, with several of the previous

Budget Details
The final agreement cut some
$40 million from the 2011-12
budget, which was approved

decisions carried over, including
the furloughs.
The agreements helped solidify
other areas of accord between the
district and the union, such as
working to support a property-tax
increase, which voters narrowly
approved this past November.
And they’re also united in
pressing for changes in the state
K-12 funding process.

‘Right Players’
The summit process itself was
not necessarily easy, though. Both
the superintendent and the union
leader say they faced internal
constituents who were uneasy
about the new approach.
Describing the negotiations,
Stevenson draws a parallel
between letting go of favored
initiatives and giving up a degree
of control she’d been accustomed
to in her position.
“One of the dangers of being
a superintendent is that you
can really start thinking you’re
important. You really have to
work against that,” she says. “In
the summit, when you’re all equal
players, suddenly what you say
has no more impact than what
everyone else says, and that can
be difficult.”
Both she and Dallman praise
a mediator brought in from the
Washington-based Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to
help with the discussion.

Asked what advice she’d give
other administrators interested
in the process, Stevenson cites
having a working relationship
with local employee associations
first. She meets with union
leaders at least once formally and
once informally each month.
And she recommends being
prepared to give up “sacred cows”
during negotiations, and having
a mediator on hand to help guide
discussions.
“We had the right players, the
right relationships, the right
mediators, the right shared
values,” she says.

Moving Forward
As of December, the budget
cycle in the district was just beginning again, and it was not yet
clear whether the summit process
would continue. Despite the new
revenue from the tax increase, officials anticipate more cuts.
Not everyone shares the opinion that the summits have been a
successful approach. Laura Boggs,
the only school board member to
vote against entering into the
summit process in 2011 and 2012,
feels that since the convenings
weren’t formally part of bargaining, they should have been open
to the public.
And their results didn’t necessarily reflect community wishes,
she contends. In 2012, community members put furloughs last

on a list of cost-saving strategies
in surveys commissioned by the
school board, yet they were continued into a second year, she
says.
“It’s a fantastic concept; anything you can do to take the adversarial [nature] out of collective bargaining should be a good
thing,” Boggs says. “The dilemma
comes when you put these people
who are so like-minded in the
same room, and the result is students are in school for fewer days.
How is that focused on academics?”
She would like the district to
consider longer-term structural
changes to the teacher-salary
schedule and pension plan.
Barnes, the former school board
member, acknowledges that most
of the committee’s fixes have been
short-term. But she says that was
partly a function of the need to
make immediate budget reductions.
Ultimately, she believes that the
summit delivered the right results at a critical time, and that it
will be up to Stevenson, the school
board, and Dallman’s successor at
the jcea to determine whether it
continues to be the appropriate
way to budget in tough times.
“I think communities are ready
for different processes at different
times,” Barnes says. “You need to
keep bringing new folks in, and
they may be ready for a different
process. Who knows?” n

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EDUCATION WEEK • February 6, 2013

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Education Week - February 6, 2013 - Special Report

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