Principal-centered negotiations: as participants in district bargaining teams, principals can support negotiations that encourage delivery of high quality educational services.

Much has been written about principle-centered negotiations, and even more about the fiscal aspects of negotiations, but much less has been written about principal-centered negotiations. But after all, what is the real purpose behind collective bargaining changes? We think it is to effect different--hopefully more positive--outcomes at the school site level, where principals take the lead in supporting teaching and learning.

Collective bargaining agreements, by their nature, impact upon the delivery of educational services to California's students. Collective bargaining agreements deal with hours of employment, evaluation of personnel, transfer of employees, leaves of absence and class size. These contract provisions directly impact a district's ability to provide quality educational services, but are often lost when fiscal considerations become the primary focus of negotiations.

Given today's high expectations for students and the high standards imposed by No Child Left Behind, California state standards and the CAHSEE, school sites must be given the tools to use all resources--but most importantly staff--to the best advantage of students.

Important contract provisions

Here are some examples of contract provisions that should be addressed as part of the collective bargaining parameters each year. The list is by no means exhaustive, but simply meant to illustrate the types of areas in which management might seek language improvements.

* Management's ability to regulate certificated personnel hours to ensure that student supervision is present prior to the arrival of students, throughout the instructional day and at the conclusion of the day for parent and student contact, if necessary.

Service hours should also be sufficient to allow for staff development, staff meetings and instructional team preparation time to ensure that teachers are appropriately prepared for high-quality instructional delivery.

* An evaluation process that makes it possible for management to identify personnel who are required to improve in order to meet mininmm district standards.

The district should only agree to evaluation requirements that are greater than those of state law if the provisions assist rather than impede management in appropriate evaluation of district personnel. The district must have full authority to be able to properly observe teachers and to evaluate their services. The district must also have sufficient authority to effectively receive and evaluate complaints made by parents, students or the public. If warranted, following an appropriate investigation, there should be an ability to use parent, student or public complaints in the evaluation process without undue harassment of those raising such concerns.

* Maintenance of sufficient authority for the district to properly monitor employee absences to ensure that usage is appropriate and the requirements of the contract and state law are being met.

Leave of absence entitlements that are provided by the district in excess of those required by law should be included in the contract only as conscious decisions of the governing board and district management. In many cases, particularly in the late stages of difficult negotiations, these important provisions can fall by the wayside. Often, all of the emphasis is on compensation and budget impacts.

Preparation for negotiations

In the financial and compensation aspects of negotiations, districts are often well prepared. The discussion below of how districts prepare for that part of negotiations should be helpful.

On the employee compensation side of the equation, district staff know that the negotiating team must focus on two major areas--comparability and maintenance of effort. Comparability means that, as compared to some appropriate group of districts, the district's salaries, benefits and other compensation elements are similar. Maintenance of effort means that the position the district has offered during bargaining will preserve the district's relative standing on these items.

These same principles can be applied to other aspects of the contract. For example, how do management rights in the areas of transfer and evaluation in the contract compare to those present in other agreements? Are we moving in the same direction as other districts in terms of maintaining the flexibility we need to serve our changing needs? Those questions deal with comparability and maintenance of effort--not in a fiscal sense, but in the context of educational delivery.

So preparation for the educational side of negotiations becomes very parallel to preparation for the financial side of negotiations. We advocate having principals and other site-level administrators on the district bargaining team, but we also think they play a key role in preparation. Site-level administrators as a group can best define the barriers to flexibility at the school site level, prioritize the needs of the sites and map out a plan of action to address those needs.

Getting started

Every journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. And we think the first step in this process is to develop a plan of action. The plan needs to have several goals and objectives. Our outline might look like this:

1. Assemble a group of highly knowledgeable site and district-level administrators for the purpose of articulating instructional elements that are within the scope of the collective bargaining agreement.

2. Ask that group to identify weaknesses, from a management perspective, in the current contract and list them article by article.

3. State clearly why each of these weaknesses is a barrier to student achievement and why it needs to be changed.

4. Gather similar articles from other districts' agreements for comparison (by the way, you will be amazed at how different the contract provisions are between districts).

5. Analyze the comparison provisions to identify elements that would move your language in the direction of your goals.

6. Re-draft the article in your contract to align more closely with your goals.

7. Assemble the re-drafted articles, supported by the comparative articles, and incorporate those articles into your initial bargaining position along with the monetary items.

8. Schedule time during negotiations sessions to present your proposals and the rationale for them to the bargaining unit. Be sure they are considered on an equal footing with the district or union's financial proposals.

9. Make all of your financial and compensation related proposals "packages" that include your management proposals.

10. Do not give up your priorities at the negotiating table--the other side is not going to give up its request for a salary increase just because you resist. Don't give up your equally important proposals just because they resist.

11. Be prepared to continue to press for your proposals even if the negotiations become difficult and move toward mediation or fact-finding. Always emphasize the need for the proposed change, show that it is comparable to what other districts have available to management, and emphasize that maintaining effort in this area is as important as maintaining effort in compensation.

Balancing "offense" and "defense"

We typically see far better preparation in the financial areas than we do in the academic areas. As a result, many negotiations quickly evolve into a discussion of what the union wants, not what management wants.

We often see well defined objectives on the union side of the table; higher salaries, better benefits, more job security and better working conditions are all meritorious goals and the union generally asserts and articulates them well. There is nothing wrong with that--it is akin to playing offense in sports.

On the district side of the table, we often see a "defensive" strategy. We gear our efforts and expend our energy addressing the union's proposals and defending our inability to do as much as they would like in the areas that are of high interest to the union. In some districts there is no "offensive" strategy at all.

We advocate for a more balanced approach. We are willing to give our best efforts to addressing the union's needs only if they are willing to dedicate the same effort toward addressing our needs.

In an ideal situation, both parties will have built trust and communication bridges that allow them to show equal consideration to each others' goals. In fact, in the best of relationships many of the goals are well understood and even shared by both sides.

Keeping academic goals in the forefront

But not all situations are ideal. And when negotiations head south, often it is management's academic and site-level goals that fall away. We have never seen a negotiation where the compensation discussion fell away first.

We think it is important that a link age is made between the union's demand for higher compensation and the district's need for greater control of the factors affecting attainment of standards and student achievement. We think that linkage keeps the district's proposals on a par with those of the union.

District management might want to consider being more creative in establishing this linkage by including proposals that strengthen educational delivery in the following way:

* Requiring a link between attaining a satisfactory evaluation prior to a salary advance or a step and column increase.

* Requiring completion of approved units of professional development within the three years immediately preceding the granting of a longevity advance.

* Adding a requirement that all teaching personnel serve as advisors to at least one student extra-curricular club.

* Adding a requirement that teachers visit at least 40 percent of the students in their homes during each school year.

Evolutionary and revolutionary ideas

While some of the above ideas may seem controversial, a well thought out proposal begins the discussion that advances the quality of student accomplishment. The district shouldn't be shy about including both evolutionary and revolutionary ideas in its initial proposal. Contract negotiations should never be one-way--the district can also propose instructionally important issues in its bargaining proposals.

Collective bargaining contracts must support and encourage the delivery of high-quality educational services for students and not impede or harm the delivery of those services. The interests of the public require that the district approach the collective bargaining process in a manner that is ever watchful of the interests of students. Just as unions have a duty to represent the issues of the members they represent, the district has a duty to represent the interests of the public.

We recognize that student achievement begins and ends at the school site and classroom levels. There are only two kinds of people in the school district--those who teach and those who support teaching.

Site-level administrators are the leaders when it comes to supporting teaching and learning. If we do not involve them in our negotiations process, we will always come up short of our highest goals for California's children.

Ron Bennett is president and John Gray is associate vice president of School Services of California, Inc.