Hinsdale High School Teachers Association

In last month’s IEA Insider, Jim Crandel, HHSTA’s Chief Negotiator during our last contract talks, writes about the importance of relationship building and the previous Board’s decision to not honor its commitment to retired teachers:

“Sure, we had our outrage, but what we needed was community members, parent organizations and the media to help our board realize that destroying teacher trust would NOT result in better schools.

Relationship building is key to the success of any organization. It’s one of the reasons your Association’s leadership has been discussing relationship building with the current Board via district administration. These talks have resulted in a compromise of sorts: a Memorandum of Agreement approved at the September 21st Board meeting that ensures Roundtable meetings between the Association and Board will continue during the negotiations process – the opposite of our current contract language. Although a step in the right direction, as we attempt together to achieve a successor agreement to our current contract, this process will be complicated by the profound breach of trust that culminated in the retiree grievance process Jim was writing about.

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Shortly after the last contract negotiations ended in 2006, HHSTA filed a grievance charging that the school board ignored both the language and the intent of the contract clause pertaining to retired teachers’ benefits when it unilaterally increased - in many instances doubling or tripling -  the insurance contributions required of retired teachers.

The following are the prepared remarks presented by Kathy Wynn, Co-President at Hinsdale South, to the Board at the March 16th Board meeting:

On March 6, the binding arbitration between the Board and the Hinsdale High School Teachers Association was sustained in its entirety in favor of the Association.  Due to the decision by the Board that led to this arbitration, the district’s taxpayers will assume the burden of attorney fees, arbitrator’s fee, and interest payments associated with the Board’s action. This expense could have been avoided if the Administration and Board had honored the commitments it made to teachers who devoted their careers to teaching in District 86.

Now that the ruling has been made, HHSTA would like to move quickly to make whole all individuals affected by the Board’s unilateral changes in retiree insurance benefits. We believe that by working together we can move beyond the lack of trust generated by the Board’s actions which led to the arbitration case. With this in mind, HHSTA would like to reiterate the sentiment expressed repeatedly over the past several years: to resolve to work together on behalf of our students.

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The following are the prepared remarks from the HHSTA-Central membership meeting, Monday August 18th:

I’ve been the new president of HHSTA-Central for not quite three months now, and I’d have to say that the question I get asked the most so far is:

What is the Association going to do about it?

Truth is, when Tom Ludovice came to me last February to start recruiting me as his replacement, it was probably because I had asked him this question fairly often. I think the reason this question gets asked so much is that at its heart resides an understanding of both our role within the Association and the role of the Association as a whole.

What is the Association going to do about it? is therefore a question of great importance for our Association to ask. In order to answer this, first let me share with you what the Association is doing right now.

This year we have two major issues on the horizon as we start the year: Defining what “excellent” means regarding teacher evaluation and per our CBA, evaluating the distribution of our coaching and extra-curricular stipends.

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At the end of the the 2007-2008 school year, I received my first evaluation as “satisfactory,” after having received an “excellent” evaluation for my previous five years at Hinsdale South.  It was a disappointing evaluation for me, for in October of 2007  I earned National Board Certification, the highest level of certification/achievement available to our nation’s K-12 educators – an achievement I thought would have earned me an excellent rating if anything ever did.  But alas, I received a “satisfactory” rating along with what appears to be 100% of the teachers in District 86; we all received the same rating this year, regardless how we performed in the previous school year.

We were informed this rating stemmed from the Administration’s realization that the dimensions of an “Excellent” rating needed to be “negotiated,” and this not having been done, everyone received the default evaluation of “Satisfactory.” This of course left me confused.  If the details of an “Excellent” rating need to be negotiated, why don’t those for “Satisfactory?” And how exactly had it been decided/determined that I had performed in a “Satisfactory” manner? And was it true that all the teachers at our district had performed at more or less the same level for the previous school year?

None of this made any sense to me, nor did it make much sense to many of my colleagues, who were frustrated by what seemed like an arbitrary decision by the district Administration. This in turn led to speculation and suspicion about what the “real” motivations of such a decision might have been. This is a natural by-product of decisions made without the full participation of all involved.

In my opinion, the administration has shot itself in the foot, for the product of this year’s staff evaluation simply has lost respect from the district corps of teachers, and hence become meaningless (at least that is the sense I have gotten from my colleagues). Although the long-term damage of this outcome remains to be seen, I ask our district administration to look at this experience and learn from it. I invite them to employ openness, honesty and full participation going forward in this. I can guarantee teachers’ desire to participate in such fashion.

“Expect Excellence” has always been the motto of District 86.  That expectation is why many teachers come to the district. It also explains the surprise experienced by many teachers last spring when they received their evaluation forms.  Most, if not all, teachers were rated as satisfactory.  A satisfactory rating is not bad, but given the acclaimed excellence of District 86, doesn’t it follow that there should be a good number of excellent teachers?  Given the amount of time and money expended in the search for superior teachers to hire, one would think the number of excellent teachers would be higher than other “satisfactory” districts.

The preface to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards begins by saying:

“Many accomplished teachers already work in the nation’s schools, but their knowledge and skills are often unacknowledged and underutilized. Delineating outstanding practice and recognizing those who achieve it are important first steps in shaping the kind of teaching profession the nation needs.”

If District 86 wants to maintain the level of teaching to which it has been accustomed for many years, then it must recognize those with outstanding instructional practice by rating them as “excellent.”

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Key to understanding what “class size” means is understanding how class size is measured, as the terms used to describe class size are often misleading or misunderstood. For example, what is an “average” class size? Often in response to class sizes concerns the District’s Pupil/Certified Staff ratio is cited as being below state averages. To the layman, this answer may suffice and even impress. But as educators, it is our duty to educate not only the students in our classrooms these figures attempt to quantify, but also ourselves on what these terms mean - especially in light of growing concerns by HHSTA educators over the size of their classes.

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MINUTES OF THE DISTRICT ROUND TABLE MEETING
BETWEEN THE HINSDALE HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATION
AND THE BOARD OF EDUCATION
HINSDALE TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT 86
March 12, 2008

Call of Meeting. A District Round Table Meeting between the Hinsdale High School Teachers Association and the Board of Education of Hinsdale Township High School District 86, DuPage and Cook Counties, Illinois was called to order by Superintendent Dr. Nicholas D. Wahl at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 12, 2008, in the Administrative Center Conference Room, 55th and Grant Streets, Hinsdale, Illinois.

Roll Call. The following members of the Board were present: Secretary Dr. Janet Plate and Mr. Vinaya Sharma. Attending for Hinsdale Central were: Tom Ludovice, Kathy Gabric, and Valerie Ruth. Attending for Hinsdale South were: Troy Courtney, Tim Davis, and Rick Cazzato. Also attending was Superintendent of Schools Dr. Nicholas Wahl and Interim Business Manger Mr. George Attaway.

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