The Williamsburg-James City County school board rejected collective bargaining for employees in the division last night.
But members of the union representing division staff said the decision isn’t the end of the conversation.
“I know collective bargaining seems like a big leap for quite a few of you — however, you’re in good hands,” said Andy Cason, a high school English teacher and executive board member of the Williamsburg-James City Education Association.
“When a student doesn’t understand, I don’t give up, and many of us do not give up, so we’re not going to give up on you,” he said, addressing the board.
School board chair Sarah Ortego, though, said the board’s decision wasn’t a result of being uninformed or misinformed.
“This is a vote about whether collective bargaining is the only way to have a seat at the table, which I don’t believe that it is,” she said. “We believe there are a number of things that could be done (to address staff concerns) that we have not exhausted yet.”
Board members reiterated concerns about potential fiscal impacts or adversarial relationships between staff and administration that might result from collective bargaining.
The timing of the vote was also a problem for the board, with the possibility of the division’s break-up still unresolved.
“Keep talking to us and giving us the opportunity to make those changes and to make things better for teachers and faculty outside of collective bargaining,” Board Member Andrea Donnor said. “I will also say that if we are not able to meet that, then … let’s reopen the conversation.”
Randy Riffle was one of two members of the board to vote in support of collective bargaining.
“I’m unapologetically going to be on the side of workers today,” he said. “These workers are some of the hardest working people I know … and they just want a chance to get more of their fair share and support their fellow workers.”
Amy Chen voted with Riffle. Chen said she hoped the board would form a joint exploratory committee to investigate the pros and cons of collective bargaining in WJCC, or have an alternative to collective bargaining fleshed out prior to rejecting the idea altogether.
“We’re saying no without having something better in place,” she said.
The board briefly discussed early concepts of what a more robust employee input process could look like, which may involve a series of facilitated conversations around a set of four topic areas. Administration floated the possibility of conducting those in October or November.
Following the meeting, union president Marco Sardi shared his thoughts with WHRO.
“We are, of course, disappointed with the board’s decision, but we look forward to continuing to advocate for our right to have staff sit with the school board and bargain in good faith.”
The vote was prompted by an affidavit the union sent the board in May. In it, the union asked the school board to start the process of establishing collective bargaining for licensed full-time division staff by forming a resolution committee.
That committee would have been responsible for crafting a resolution to officially permit collective bargaining in the division, which would have to return to the board for approval before it could go into effect.
Sardi previously told WHRO he saw collective bargaining as a way for staff to address lingering issues in a collective bargaining agreement, such as setting a cap on the maximum number of hours staff can work in a day and guaranteeing teachers planning time while on the clock.
“We’ve been seeing the same problems for, like, the last 20 years and they’re still problems,” Sardi said. “Some of them have been fixed, a lot of them haven’t.”
Note: Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools is a member of the Hampton Roads Educational Telecommunications Association, which holds the broadcast license for WHRO. Multiple members of the WJCC School Board sit on WHRO boards and committees.
