Memphis teacher unions clash as one makes formal step toward bargaining new contract

Memphis teachers made the first step toward bargaining a new agreement with the Memphis-Shelby County Schools district.

During their regular board meeting Tuesday night, Danette Stokes, president of the United Education Association of Shelby County, presented a petition to MSCS board members. Among them is Keith Williams, a new board member who is the executive director of the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, a second teachers' union that actively opposes the step toward bargaining a new contract.

The most recent teacher-MSCS agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding, expired in 2018. While Memphis teachers reopened the bargaining process by 2019, there is not an agreement from those sessions.

Stokes handed the envelope of signatures to the district Tuesday.

"We have the opportunity to create an MOU," Stokes later told The Commercial Appeal. "But what is it that (teachers) want? And that's what I want. I want what we all want."

More:MSCS board member's union files suit against district, discourages new teacher contract

MSCS last month confirmed that prior set of bargaining sessions has concluded. But Keith Williams and the MSCEA President Anntriniece Napper reiterated Tuesday they expect the district will still present an agreement from those sessions to union presidents for signatures.

Based on conflicting statements from the teacher unions and a lack of clarity from the district, it is unclear what could happen next and when bargaining could start. UEA believes it has restarted bargaining and that an old MOU is not on the table. MSCEA says it is waiting to sign that very MOU and then dismiss a lawsuit.

A petition, if signed by 15% of educators and presented to the district in October, is supposed to spark a teacher voting process where voters agree to bargaining and indicate who they want to represent them, according to state law.

But it is unclear where the district stands on the bargaining sessions Keith Williams says are ongoing.

Asked by The Commercial Appeal to reaffirm that the petition will begin a new bargaining process, the district's media relations team referred the newspaper to a statement about teacher salary Interim Superintendent Toni Williams made during a report Tuesday night.

Toni Williams said she had "not waivered" from a commitment to teacher compensation and has "plans to move swiftly already underway."

Keith Williams, whose union is currently suing the school district over teacher employment contracts, told The Commercial Appeal he expected the district to provide an agreement to sign.

"We are not going to rewrite what we've done. We've worked too hard and too long," Keith Williams said, calling the UEA's move to restart the process "buffoonery."

More:MSCS standardized teacher salaries. Former Superintendent Joris Ray got a raise

What is collaborative conferencing?

Tennessee has a labor law for teacher unions called the Professional Educators Collaborative Conferencing Act of 2011, referred to by the acronym PECCA. The process can include school board members, which Stokes says will highlight possible conflicting interests of Keith Williams, the board member who directs the other teacher's union.

The law prohibits teacher strikes and prescribes the scope of teacher negotiations. Salary and insurance are subject to bargaining, for instance, but the agreement can't cover teacher evaluations or performance-based bonus pay.

The petition Stokes submitted Tuesday is the first step. From there, the district creates a committee of district officials and board members. That group oversees a secret ballot, where educators decide if they want collaborating conferencing to happen. If a majority of eligible voters choose to begin negotiations, then bargaining starts.

The resulting bargaining committee includes an equal number of school district representatives and union representatives. Those representatives correspond to the share of the votes cast by educator union affiliations, so long as any organization had at least 15% of votes. Unaffiliated representatives can join the committee if 15% of voting educators say they are unaffiliated with a union.

The representatives have a three-year term, according to the law. Before the three-year term ends, the Tennessee law says, "a new poll shall be conducted...to determine whether the professional employees want to continue to engage in collaborative conferencing."

In February of 2019, MSCS had a collaborative conferencing committee and later that year began meetings for the new agreement. At that time, the most recent agreement had expired in March 2018.

UEA wants better salary schedule, better benefits

Stokes, with UEA, told The Commercial Appeal she is polling teachers to see what they would like to have in a new teacher agreement. But part of that will likely be an improved teacher salary schedule and lowered insurance payments.

While collaborative conferencing was ongoing, the district announced lowered teacher premiums.

"We hope to get even better," Stokes said Tuesday.

She also hopes to restore a salary schedule that differentiates for more education degrees or "lanes." The district also debuted a teacher salary schedule, while bargaining was ongoing, in May 2021. Then-Superintendent Joris Ray received a raise when the schedule took effect.

Bringing the petition forward Tuesday, Stokes told board members she was "shocked and disappointed" that MSCEA "worked in direct opposition to seeing this process be successful."

Napper, the MSCEA president, encouraged members to not sign the petition to move forward with bargaining. Stokes called that "attempting to sabotage the process."

MSCEA seeks signature on unsigned MOU

Charlotte Fields, an MSCEA member who was part of the recent bargaining committee and is part of the MSCEA lawsuit against the district, spoke after Stokes presented the petition Tuesday.

"The only thing that's left is teacher salaries. And I am elated to tell you this afternoon that Superintendent (Toni Williams) has contacted us and working with me, a teacher, also as part of the PECCA committee, we've gotten together, we've started this process, and it's going well," Fields said.

"And to resolve this," she added, "we only have a couple more meetings to go and hopefully we will be able to sign that MOU very soon."

The current MSCEA lawsuit in chancery court over teacher contracts — the individual employment contracts for each teacher — does not mention the PECCA law, which allows unresolved complaints over the process to become lawsuits. It is unclear if the suit counts as a complaint under the PECCA law or if another such suit exists.

The school district has filed to dismiss this lawsuit, calling it "baffling" that the union and its members "are seeking a trial to invalidate their contracts because that would cause a grave amount of uncertainty for thousands of teachers who could potentially lose their jobs..."

Keith Williams told The Commercial Appeal Tuesday MSCEA would dismiss the lawsuit if the district and union sign the MOU.

"If we sign the MOU we would have to dismiss it, we would have to come to an agreement," he said.

Laura Testino covers education and children's issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @LDTestino

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: MSCS teacher unions clash as one makes formal step toward new contract