Hamilton County teachers will soon vote on whether they’d like to participate in collaborative conferencing, or negotiations, with the district on matters like salaries, working conditions and benefits for the 2023-24 school year.
On Thursday, the Hamilton County Education Association took the first step toward establishing a new agreement, called a memorandum of understanding, with Hamilton County Schools.
Currently, the association does not have such an agreement with the district due to complications with an online poll — a step required by the law to establish negotiations — last year, Jeanette Omarkhail, president of the group, said in a phone call.
Under the Professional Educators Collaborative Conferencing Act, which governs the collaboration process, a professional employee organization must submit a petition signed by at least 15% of certified employees, which then triggers a poll to determine if a majority want to participate in collaborative conferencing.
Omarkhail said the group submitted a petition with approximately 1,550 signatures, 0r 40% of certified educators, to the Board of Education on Thursday evening.
“I think we’re very, very aligned,” school board Chairwoman Tiffanie Robinson said in a phone call, referring to the goals of the board and the Hamilton County Education Association. “It should be a very simple process.”
The next step is a vote, conducted by a special question committee, to determine if the majority of educators want to participate in collaborative conferencing. This is where things went wrong last year, Omarkhail said.
“We used SurveyMonkey, and the district put it together, put it out, but there were some technical issues,” she said. “Some people didn’t get it. (For) some people, it went to their clutter or went to their spam.”
The effort failed by 17 votes.
This means teachers have been operating without certain protections like guaranteed lunch breaks and limits to after-school meetings.
“This year, everything is contingent upon the board policy or state law, instead of having other things in place,” Omarkhail said. “People are maintaining some of the things that were happening before, but the number of meetings that can be had outside of the school day, that is something that I’m hearing is happening, that (teachers are) being asked to work more or stay after and have meetings.”
The expired agreement limited after-school meetings to no more than four hours each month and ensured a daily, duty-free lunch period equal in length to the scheduled student lunch period, among many other things.
Omarkhail said if the vote passes, a big focus of collaborations will be salary and working conditions.
“How much time is being asked of teachers without pay is affecting the working conditions greatly,” she said.
(READ MORE: Hamilton County school board approves $456 million budget, 3% raise for teachers)
The special question committee has until Jan. 1 to conduct the poll and collect the results, and then negotiations will begin. Once an agreement is reached, it will take effect after July 2023.
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @carmen_nesbitt.