SMSD Superintendent talks recent teacher contract negotiations, ways forward

Dr. Mike Fulton, Superintendent of the Shawnee Mission School District, invited student journalists from all five Shawnee Mission high school publications to discuss the negotiations between the National Education Association and the SMSD, and ways to move forward, on Thursday.

Here are questions asked by the student journalists, followed by Fulton’s responses — as well as the responses of SMSD Chief Communications Officer David Smith and Board of Education President Heather Ousley, who were also in attendance.

Each question is presented with the full context of the answer.

So, on Friday, when the schools were first starting their walkouts, what was the response like [from the Center of Academic Achievement] and kind of navigating that? And communicating to each school on how to handle it? 

(FULTON): You know, what’s interesting and good about that is that in the past, walkouts would cause some controversy. Is that fair? And there was none of that. Our feeling is that the policy that we put in place really regulates what happens in that space, including our behavior. And our feeling was, if that is something students are doing then we have two concerns: are you safe, and is there some sort of a plan for when everyone comes back in the building?

Really safety’s the biggest concern, but there was never any discussion about restricting voice or anything. I just want to make sure people are safe and that they’re being respectful in the process. 

Do you have an estimate as a district of how many people you expect to sign the 19-20 contract? 

(FULTON): You know, I’m going to leave that up to each individual. And I’m not being political here, I just really think for me to speak for somebody else [wouldn’t be appropriate]. I just want to make sure people are really clear on what their options are. When you sign a three-year, it’s really about signing on for this year. Because we’re still on, this is part of 19-20. And then they’ll have an opportunity to decide for next year and the following year at a later time. 

I know that the union had filed to the Kansas Board of Labor. What have developments been behind that within the district to make sure the final contract is the final contract?

(FULTON): Well, right now, the final contract is the final contract. What they filed with the department of labor, we’ve responded to. They filed a complaint, and we filed a pretty extensive response publicly. Now it’s up entirely to the department of labor. 

I will tell you that we think about these things really carefully, and we would never engage in or do anything that we felt was anything other than completely legal. That’s important, because we’re trying to play fair and do the right thing under the circumstances. They’ve filed theirs, we’ve filed ours and what the department of labor chooses? That’s entirely up to them. Or how they decide to act on it is entirely up to them. 

From the district’s perspective, are you guys at all worried about losing a significant amount of teachers?

(FULTON): We’re not — but I’m hopeful that as people start to look at what’s there, they feel good, and honored in terms of being a professional, in terms of the raises that have been provided and that we really held the existing negotiated agreement in hold. There were very few changes. That was out of respect to our teachers. 

I’m hopeful that everybody stays, and it certainly is never our intent to set up a situation where people are feeling like they don’t feel valued as a professional or that they have to leave a place where they love working with you guys and love teaching.

To clarify [for readers,] you’ve made clear that you can’t change the hours that teachers are working at the moment. But does that mean it’s going to take years for any changes at all? 

(FULTON): So what we’ve been very up front about, and clear in all of our conversations, is that we are going to work on a plan that by the 21-22 school year, not next year but the following year, we’re going  to work on getting adjustments to secondary workload. How much? At what pace? Those have yet to be determined, because you have all these study process and fiscal analyses that have to be done.

That will determine the ‘what,’ and the pace at which things start to occur. And beyond that, I don’t want to get much more specific because otherwise I’d be jumping ahead of the planning process and that wouldn’t be appropriate. And honestly, to be candid with you, I don’t know. And I won’t know until we get all the data out in front of us. 

Some teachers, at least that The Harbinger has talked to for its reporting, have felt a sense of disrespect from the district. I’m wondering how the district is seeing that now, and as they’re carrying forward, they’ll have to mend those relationships.

(FULTON): Sure, well first of all, I understand the feeling. And that was never, and would never, be our intent. I would never want someone to feel…I’d never want an employee, I’d never want a student to feel disrespected or not valued, because that doesn’t make for a good place to learn or a good place to work.

And that’s why in this process, we did our very best to make sure that we were addressing compensation in a way that was fair and also affordable. And also making sure that we were being, that we were staying in the process that’s defined for us. And that we aren’t going out and saying or doing anything that would be construed as trying, in any way, unduly influence of what the outcome of the process was. 

That makes it really hard, because I know one of the criticisms has been that we weren’t saying anything. And I think as some of the board member comments have said, and I’ve been saying, that’s because we couldn’t. It would’ve been inappropriate to do so.

Now that we have a voice back, now we can start to engage in conversations like this, and hopefully people can start to see the ‘why’ behind the decisions. I would also encourage everyone to take time to look at the Fact Finder’s report, and look at the proposals that were provided. Because one of the things we tried to do was that we went as far as we could on the compensation side to be fair, but also to make sure we didn’t put our district in financial jeopardy.

For that three-year unilateral contract, part of the fear for some teachers was signing a three-year they can’t negotiate with. I know part of the three-year’s advantage was that it allowed the district to address workload in the contract. How come you weren’t able to go with a one-year contract, as was proposed lastly by the NEA-SM, and address workload separately? 

(FULTON): So the short version of that is this — in the course of negotiations, if you look at the district’s proposal and you look at the cost of the NEA responses, we were pretty far apart. There was not…might want to help me out [David Smith], trying to think of how to best frame this. But we were trying to address the issue of plan time, but in order to do that, you have to work with the operating budget, but you also have to work with all of the budget to figure out a long-term strategy that’s fiscally responsible and sustains what we have.

Because here’s the problem, and we’re conservative in these estimates, you want to make sure you’re not shortchanging yourself. We’re looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 million if we go five out of seven, ish. We don’t know the exact number until we get that study [Strategic Plan issue 3.2.2] done, we have a plan in place. 

That’s a lot of money, and that’s not going to all be gained from the operating budget. I mean it has to come from the operating budget, we’ve got to figure out the budget as a whole to say, ‘what are the ways that we can work with existing resources to make that happen.’ 

So there inlies the challenge. In order to do that, we have to have certainty of where our budget’s going to sit over these three years. So, we know what the raises are going to be, we know what the revenue is that’s coming from the state. Now we can sit down, with the budget as a whole, and once the study’s complete and we’ve done our analysis of enrollment projections, building capacities, we have our learning design down — once all that’s complete, now we can work do develop a strategy for freeing up that $5 million to fund it. 

…

(HEATHER OUSLEY): Can I just add something to that?…Some of the things that are coming next semester that are going to help us figure out how to phase it in and rebudget for workload, the demographics study — where are we going to have the kids?…We need to be looking at phasing into the middle schools a little bit…

But there’s variance in it — do we reduce the workload the same for english teachers and math teachers? Do we know? Not yet. We have our own ideas, but that’s part of going through the next two months so we can lay it out in a way that’s effective and fair to all the educators. Something that gets lost as well is that our community also wants to do workload reduction for elementary school teachers, and that would look to cost another $2 million. So we’re trying to figure out $2 million at the elementary level, $5 million at the middle and high school levels, and the financial offers from the NEA were well, well outside of what we could do. 

It had nothing to do with what we wanted to do, and I think I can speak for every single board member in a heartbeat, we would’ve done exactly what they wanted us to do if we were able to because no one wants to be portrayed as a villain. That’s not enjoyable at all. 

But there’s no point in passing something that another board is going to have to undo in its entirety, or that would put the district in such financial risk that it would not be able to maintain its functions. So I think that the language allows us to get to where we need to be, and I believe under Dr. Fulton’s leadership that we’re going to provide good results in June 2020. 

(FULTON): One thing about the study piece that’s so important is that if you’re going to have a good strategic planning process, then the process has to be real. I mean, when you get a study group together, the work they’re doing matters. And I am very careful about making any decision about what should happen next until first we have the results of that study to inform us of what our next steps might be.

And even with that, there needs to be some additional input in terms of what the final set of recommendations look like. And that’s what this looks like, in a planning process that says, ‘we value voice, we want voice, so let’s get it on the table, let’s get good research and data in front of us so we can make the best possible decisions.’

So touching on the note of fiscal responsibility, which has been brought up a bit. The opening of the aquatic center, for a building like that, what is your guys’ vision for a building like that, and for a large amount of money being spent on that that a lot of the public saw as a deviation from paying teachers, despite the budget working differently than that. What type of return on investment are you guys anticipating for a building like this, and how this can be seen as fiscally responsible. 

(FULTON): Sure, so the actual construction came from a bond issue, and bond issues can’t be used for salaries. We did, in order to mitigate the impact on the operating fund — which is what teachers are paid from — we did shift the custodial and maintenance costs over to the capital fund. And that way, we’re lessening the impact on the operating fund.

Yeah, now the operating fund’s still picking things up like water, utilities, that kind of thing. And in order to offset those costs, we’re doing extensive rentals. That doesn’t get you 100% of the way there in terms of cost offset, but it goes a long way toward making it more viable, in terms of the impact. And we’re going to keep looking for ways to do cost offsets. But clearly, when you open up a facility like that, it’s absolutely going to have some fixed cost. And some of that fixed cost is going to come out of operating. 

But again, one of the things that we’ve done over the last two years, is that we’re asking the questions about what we can do different. And we cut $680,000 in administrative costs, between this year and next year. That’s a big step forward, and that’s all upper administration. In fact, we’re all wearing more hats because of it, and that’s fine. 

And we’ll keep looking at those kinds of costs and begin to find ways to streamline costs in the operating budget to try and keep money going to the classroom. The problem is, there’s an awful lot that got cut in the bad years. So now it’s a matter of, well some of the things that got cut would be nice to bring back, but right now we’re going to have to do it in a really thoughtful way, in a very transparent way as well. The strategic plan will guide a lot of that. All of it, really.

Since you’ve seen the negative backlash from teachers and students, has the district taken a step back to reevaluate or are you guys standing strong behind your current point of view?

(FULTON): You know, thank you for asking that question. From the very beginning, we never viewed this as adversarial. From the beginning, and I actually said this in a faculty advisory meeting back in the fall, here’s what I said. 

I said, ‘there’s no philosophical opposition to doing five out of seven.’ None. We support the goal. But I also said this. We have to figure out a fiscally responsible way to get there. That has been the challenge. So I think sometimes the perception is that we’re holding firm, we don’t want to do it, that’s absolutely not true. It’s in the strategic plan, we’re going to address it, we’re going to stay true to that. But we have to have a path forward that sustains for the long term, that we can actually afford to implement.

So for me, I think the hardest thing in this entire process is not having voice. Not being able to express my feelings, my personal feelings on this. The board has felt the same way, I think the administrators have felt the same way. 

…

(HEATHER OUSLEY): May I add something to that? I’ve been in public education advocacy for years. I have an enormous number of very close, personal friends that I care deeply about who are educators. My children attend Shawnee Mission schools…I would never have signed a contract if I didn’t believe truly in my bones that the fundamentals of the contract were good, and were a good deal.

And I think, if under different circumstances, we hadn’t been able to reach consensus with this particular outcome, I think it really, truly would’ve been one that we could have celebrated.

The last contract we signed, the teachers did not receive a raise to the base, they received a 1% stipend. And this contract has, year over year, increases to the base, not stipends, so that’s increasing each year for a total of 3.75% over those three years. And health insurance covered up to 7.8%. 

I mean, I remember seven years ago, six years ago, when we were in the middle of the $30 million worth of [Gov. Sam] Brownback cuts, this type of contract would’ve been a moonshot. Not possible. And this board, because it’s a friendly board, there was never any intent to do anything with regards to stripping any of the protections for educators. 

There is an enormous amount of risk for the union when a board has the ability to issue a unilateral contract, because we could issue whatever we wanted. We could strip out 57 pages worth of negotiated history, and say, ‘we’re just doing what we want.’ But that was never the intention, that’s not what we wanted. We wanted to ensure that everything that was in there that was previously negotiated would remain in there, and just to trust that we would keep the good parts in. 

So I’m actually, I know this is going to sound bizarre, but I’m really proud of the people on our board…I’m proud of our board for doing the right thing ultimately with the best circumstances that we could, given what was happening. And I so appreciate the students standing up for their teachers and speaking out for what their teachers do for them.

I wish I could have gotten you the information about what was going to be in the contract before. I wish we could’ve had this conversation a week ago. Because, I think, a week ago it would’ve alleviated some of the fears, and people would’ve understood what some of the intentions of the board going into it were. If they had access to the terms of the contract, they would’ve been able to say, ‘wait, let’s have a better conversation about this.’ If that makes sense. 

So what are teachers supposed to do now that they feel overworked?

(FULTON): Well, we’ve had six for awhile. And I understand their perspective on it, and I’m sensitive to that, and it’s one of the reasons why we’re working so hard to try to get back to where we used to be, when we gave it up because there was no money for raises. I get that. 

I just want to keep encouraging them, and keep supporting them in any way that I can as we address the issue of workload. And we’re certainly sensitive to it, we’re hearing it and we’re going to do everything we can to move as quickly as we can. But in order to do that, we need to have the resources to make that happen. And a plan that we’re going to hold to. 

(DAVID SMITH): I do think it’s also important to understand that even if we wanted to, it’s logistically not possible to do something for next year. If, you know, changing workload would mean hiring more teachers, that process would’ve needed to have already started, we would need to be well on our way with that. If you’re going to add additional classes, you’ve got to figure out, ‘where’s the capacity?’ and what we have to do to have the capacity. That’s part of the study. All of that means that we can’t do that for next year. The earliest that the board can make that happen is 21-22.

(FULTON): Yeah, the good thing is that the study’s going on right now and it’s all going to start coming together this spring. So, June of 2020 is the latest that we’re going to bring recommendations on and we’re going to move as fast as we can. But we’re only going to move as fast as the data collection and analysis allows us to do it. And then we’re going to try to put together a plan that people can have some certainty about. 

Since this is a new three-year contract, do you think it constricts teachers at all? When it comes to the fact that they can’t really negotiate it?

(FULTON): Well, it certainly defines what the terms are going to be. And I just want to be clear about this, that the purpose of it is to give certainty of what raises are going to be. We know how much money we’re going to get from the state. The difference between now and the past was that we really didn’t know how much, now we do.

There’s certainty in terms of what the working conditions are going to be. And that doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to continue to work with teachers in terms of what their concerns and issues are, just because the contract itself doesn’t change over that period of time. 

From the district’s perspective, do you believe that this came about, this crunch for money when negotiating with teachers — was it more of a financial jeopardy issue, or it was more of a budgeting issue? 

(FULTON): There’s several factors in that, and one is, first of all, Kansas has been shortchanging schools for a long, long time. So there’s a cumulative effect of that. I mean, we are trying to make up for years of shortfall. That always makes it tough for everybody, because you can never do as much as you’d want to do…

…We absolutely were squeezing out as much as we could do [for teacher contracts]. We need to work in ways that are fiscally responsible and sustainable ways. You have to take care of the moment, but you also have to be thinking five, ten years down the road. You don’t want to be doing something today that causes harm tomorrow. 

Now, if you end up doing that, and you’re doing the best you can with what you have…but if you normally do something that you know is going to put you in financial jeopardy, then that’s not being responsible. And the board built that responsibility to make sure to take care of today and certainly tomorrow. 

Along with that, and this, I think, is important to know, even within this process of staying fiscally responsible, we’re still going to cut over $700,000 out of next year’s budget. And we’re going to continue to look for cost savings. So it’s a function of what money do you have available, and then how do you work with the existing budget to prioritize those things that matter most. And what matters most are those items that we’ve identified in the Strategic Plan, and a big part of that is having great teachers that support your learning.

What is the district, just subsequent to what just happened, what is the district’s short-term plan for moving forward, then? 

(FULTON): Well, again, meetings absolutely help. I think it’s important that people can sit down and look at the documentation. Understand the story, because it’s a story that’s been developing here. A process that’s happened, documentation that’s occurred, an independent Fact Finder who isn’t beholden to either party. Who’s kind of laying out the reality of the case with some recommendations.

So part of it is helping people to understand how we got to where we’re at, where are we and then we’ll begin to work together over the next couple weeks, it’s about helping people to know their choices in contracts, and we’ll just keep working on the relationship piece.

You’ve talked a lot about doing things responsibly for the district, and how we all have similar goals. If you could turn back the clock to the summer, is there anything you would change with the negotiations? If so, how does that impact your negotiations in the future?

(FULTON): So, let me go back to my armchair quarterback, meaning this process is hard to really…you always reflect, right? It’s a great question. You always look in the rearview mirror and reflect on everything. 

I really don’t know. We ended up where we ended up. But I can tell you this — it’s our intent to never end up in this place again. That’s really, at this point, my focus is on how we begin to build that positive culture and establish relationships. And going back to a place where we’re in those good relationships.