Nearly 125 Lindbergh teachers went public with their concerns about contract negotiations for the 2009-2010 school year during a Board of Education meeting last week, contending the board is denying their constitutional rights to collective bargaining.

A three-year contract agreement between the Lindbergh National Education Association and the Board of Education that was approved in 2006 expires at the end of the current school year.

That agreement provided average salary increases of 4.5 percent for both the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years and 4.25 percent for the current school year.

While the Board of Education is offering a total compensation package increase of 3.08 percent — a 2-percent salary increase plus maintaining current benefits — LNEA representatives want the administration and Board of Education to expand the scope of negotiations to include all four sections of the district’s Teacher Handbook.

Traditionally, only the first section relating to salaries and benefits has been included in binding contract agreements between the board and the LNEA.

However, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that teachers and other public employees have a constitutional right to engage in collective bargaining with their government employers. While governmental entities aren’t bound to reach work agreements with labor unions, once they do, they cannot simply back out of the contracts, the Supreme Court ruling stated.

Teachers packed the boardroom at the March 10 meeting with three Lindbergh High School teachers — P.J. Barbeau, Rich Florez and David Blackwood — addressing the school board during a period for public comment.

Barbeau said, “… I have lots of emotions inside tonight, but probably the most predominant one is sadness. I feel a great sense of sadness upon learning that the constitutional rights of the Lindbergh school teachers are not being met and not being respected. And I won’t prolong this, but I would urge you with great sincerity and concern about my school district to reconsider your stand, reconsider abiding by the constitutional guidelines that now govern negotiations between teachers and school boards …”

After the teachers spoke, board President Ken Fey said, “… I know it is really not the tradition of the board to give any opinions or to even speak at this time. But as I have heard this evening, these are different times. These are troubling times and I felt that you all needed a response. And since you all are here and are waiting for a response, I will be happy to read one.”

Fey said, “Given these dire economic times, we are proud that we can offer the 2-percent salary increase plus maintain the board-paid benefits for a total compensation package increase of 3.08 percent. We understand this is less than prior years, but we now face new troubling and dire economic times. As you know, we have had to trim $1.3 million from this year’s budget in order to control our deficit spending. We still will be spending $3 million out of the reserves to cover our costs …

“You may hear that several nearby districts are giving normal raises in the 4- to even 5-percent range. These districts have recently passed operational tax levies and are locked into multiyear salary contracts. In summary, we just wanted to share where we are coming from and that we wish we could offer more. Given that many of our community members have lost their job, companies are closing and no end in sight to this bleak time, it is comforting to have a relatively secure job and a modest raise. We work closely with the LNEA leadership and appreciate their role and dedication. We hope this information lets you see our viewpoint and aids in the understanding of the issue.”

Beth Siegfried and Diane O’Leary, LNEA co-presidents, issued a statement after the board meeting: “We know our constitutional rights to bargain collectively are being denied by the Lindbergh Board of Education and in their statement, they chose to not even address the issue. Also, the 2-percent raise in salary does not tell the whole story.

“Along with this raise came a reduction in salary at the top of most salary columns with removal of the longevity steps teachers worked so long and hard to achieve. These reductions range from nearly $8,000 to $2,000. Many districts have longevity steps to retain the top teachers and reward them for service to the district. This salary schedule places Lindbergh below our benchmark districts — Parkway, Kirkwood, Rockwood, Webster, Pattonville — making it difficult to attract and retain quality teachers.”

Superintendent Jim Simpson told the Call that the longevity steps, or super steps, have been suspended for one year, impacting about 75 of the district’s roughly 418 teachers.

“That has been suspended for one year, the super steps,” he said. “The super steps are big, big steps and if you’re on the edge of a super step, you’re going to be very unhappy right now and we understand that. We do understand that.

“But we can only raise the salary schedule by 2 percent. The super steps will not allow us to do that unless we make some people on the salary schedule get zero percent …”

The 2007 Missouri Supreme Court ruling has changed the landscape regarding negotiations with teachers, he said.

“… A district does not have to agree to anything, but if they do, they agree to it eternally. So in the old way, which is now the old way — so we’re taking a while to get that through our head — in the old way, employees would sit down with boards and administration and discuss ideas to improve the district or improve working conditions, and if it made sense, we’d do it,” Simpson said. “And there’s countless examples in Lindbergh where that occurred. And if it didn’t work out in a few years, we undid it. Oh, that didn’t work as well as we thought. Now there’s no ‘it didn’t work as well as we thought’ in it. Now it is a binding legal agreement that cannot be changed …”

District officials are willing to discuss Sections 2, 3 and 4 of the Teacher Handbook that relate to working conditions and professional procedures with teachers at any time, but not in a negotiation setting, he said.

“… I guess the next step is that we hope we can do the following. We would hope that the LNEA would understand this position and realize that as soon as the negotiation light is turned off — and that could be any day — that we’re ready to go to any places they want to go and meet and talk about all aspects of our district and work on anything they feel needs to be worked on and start once again the Lindbergh tradition of we’re here to sit down and talk as equals and colleagues and figure out what to do to have the best school district we possibly can. So we’d like for that to occur and for understanding to occur that even though it’s a modest raise compared to years past, it is a raise and there’s so many Americans that are getting not only no raise, but maybe getting laid off or a salary freeze or a reduction in wages and so we have to understand how fortunate we are …

“We’re hopeful that our LNEA will understand those blessings and we are very hopeful the LNEA will understand the spirit of partnership and collegiality that we bring and have brought to this over the years. And we’ll meet and talk about everything. So we don’t have to really fight it out about binding legal language …”

Siegfried told the Call the LNEA wants to expand negotiations to include Sections 2, 3 and 4 of the Teacher Handbook and cited the 2007 state Supreme Court ruling.

“That is what that’s being based on. It said that public school teachers had the right to collective bargaining. We have dealt with both the Missouri NEA and with some private counsel and their indication is that even though that law has not been defined yet by the state, that items relating to teaching conditions would be negotiable items,” she said.

Asked if teachers’ concerns involve the 2-percent raise or expanding the scope of negotiations, she said, “Both issues. It’s both issues and the issue with money is not nearly — it’s really very little about the percent that was offered, it’s about what it does to the integrity of our salary schedule. We feel it compromises the integrity of our salary schedule.”

Asked to elaborate on how the 2-percent raise impacts the integrity of the salary schedule, Siegfried said, “Well, what it does at some steps along the way is if you would look at our salary schedule right now and let’s say I’m on Step 10 moving to Step 11. OK, if I take a 2-percent increase off of that Step 10, yes, I am getting an increase. But going to Step 11, I would be getting an increase, but that Step 11 has actually shrunk from the previous salary …”

She added, “… Our No. 1 goal is just to continue to provide the quality education and we want to be able to keep the ability to not only attract high-quality new teachers, but retain those that we currently have and that’s why we feel remaining competitive is very important.”