Hearing set on school district union contracts

A state law passed in 2009 means the financial impact of union contracts will be made public before the Clark County School Board ratifies the agreements Thursday.

In past years, the School Board voted on the contracts after a closed session, often with little public discussion or explanation of details.

The three Clark County School District contracts to be discussed Thursday include those with the Clark County Education Association, which represents teachers, and the Education Support Employees Association, which bargains for support staff. Both have agreed to give up longevity-based pay raises to save the district about $25 million for 2010-11.

The third contract is with the Clark County Association of School Administrators and Professional-technical Employees, which has agreed to the equivalent of a 1.5 percent salary reduction. Its members will work three fewer days in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The concession from the administrators union is expected to save the district $2 million as it budgets for a $145 million shortfall next year. The shortfall was created by state funding cuts and declining property tax revenue.

Stephen Augspurger, executive director of the administrators union, has criticized the district's budget process as confusing and hard to follow. He said the district "does not have a good track record with transparency."

Augspurger criticized Thursday's public hearing as being "out of sequence." The three main employee associations already have ratified the contracts based on the terms reached with the district's bargaining team, he said.

Superintendent Walt Rulffes said the public hearing is really more "for information purposes."

While the School Board in theory could reject the contracts, members would be on precarious legal grounds because they gave staff guidance on setting parameters for the labor pacts, Rulffes said.

While Rulffes said the new law indicates the public wants more scrutiny of employee contracts, he rejected the criticism that the district is not very transparent, noting that union contracts are always posted online after they are approved.

Augspurger called for collective bargaining negotiations to occur in public, saying it would make the School Board more accountable and restore public confidence in the district.

Also, it would help keep some employee groups from receiving special treatment from the district, he said. Augspurger cited a pension benefit exclusively for teachers, the superintendent's severance package and new perks awarded to top administrators as examples of that.

Rulffes said the administrators union could be criticized for getting special benefits. But the superintendent said he agreed with Augspurger that collective bargaining should be done in public.

He said public bargaining would make it more difficult for unions to stall negotiations so they can benefit from the "evergreen provision," which honors the old contract if new terms are not reached before it expires.

The Police Officers Association of the Clark County School District has been under a contract that expired in 2007.

"They have not gained anything, but they have not lost anything either," Rulffes said.

Rulffes recently asked to meet with Mike Thomas, president of the police union, to work out a settlement, but Thomas refused, saying he was not going to meet without his union's attorney.

"They're the ones suing us," Thomas said.

The district is challenging a ruling by the Local Government Employee Management Labor Relations Board that would give school police the same kind of arbitration rights other police officers and firefighters receive.

The association represents 160 officers, a small portion of the district's 38,000 employees.

Contact reporter James Haug at jhaug@review
journal.com or 702-374-7917.