Kirk Kelly is the director of testing and accountability for the Hamilton County School system.
Staff File PhotoIf Hamilton County public school teachers want to negotiate for a pay raise or better benefits, they need to check their school email on Tuesday morning.
By 8:30 a.m., 3,179 teachers, librarians, guidance counselors and other professional employees will receive an email link to a confidential poll that asks two questions: Do they want to enter “collaborative conferencing,” the new process that replaces collective bargaining, with the Hamilton County Department of Education? And what professional organization would they like to represent them?
To keep voting confidential, each email will contain a randomly generated number that will allow professional employees to go online and vote — once.
“It lets [them] come in and vote only once,” said Kirk Kelly, the school district’s director of Accountability and Testing. “You don’t know who it is, because it’s a randomly generated number.”
Kelly made those comments Wednesday afternoon to a “special question committee” of two school board members, Joe Galloway and Karitsa Mosley, and two teachers, Marilyn Sprickard and Scott Farley, who were chosen to oversee the polling.
A majority of the district’s professional employees, or 1,591, must answer yes to the first question — or the whole process stops, said Farley, who teaches at Ooltewah High School.
He stressed that completing the poll, which can be done on a smart phone, takes less than a minute.
“If a high school teacher thinks they can do it in the pass between classes, they’ll do it,” Farley said.
The poll lists two groups that employees can choose from to negotiate on their behalf: the Hamilton County Education Association, which is the longtime local teachers union, and the Professional Educators of Tennessee, a Nashville-area group that describes itself as a nonpartisan teachers’ association.
Or, professional employees can pick “unaffiliated,” which is a choice required by law.
A professional organization needs to get at least 15 percent of the vote in order to get a seat at the negotiating table. If 15 percent of employees pick “unaffiliated,” the committee will pick someone to represent them.
Even those teachers who vote against having collaborative conferencing will still get to pick which group they would like to represent them. And those who vote “no” will get to pick a fourth category, “none of the above.”
The confidential poll will be held from 8:30 a.m. Tuesday to 5 p.m. Thursday.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.