CINCINNATI – School districts exist to serve the needs of students. Teachers unions exist to serve the interests of their members.

Sometimes those interests conflict and threaten to undermine the fundamental purpose of public education.

A perfect example comes from the Princeton, Ohio school district, which received a favorable court ruling earlier this year allowing it to outsource its vocational education program despite the objections of the teachers union.

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Faced with a $68 million budget deficit in April, 2009, school board members received some seemingly good news. They learned they could eliminate 13 teaching jobs and save $1.3 million per year by outsourcing vocational educational services to the Great Oaks Joint Vocational School District.

The situation couldn’t have been more perfect for the Princeton district. While it was required by law to offer vocational education to students, the service was free through the Great Oaks district.

The Great Oaks district is funded through a separate tax mechanism, and requires no contribution from outside districts that enroll their students in its program.

But then the teachers union got wind of the deal and very nearly destroyed it.

Schools are not employment agencies

The Princeton Association of Classroom Educators (PACE), the local teachers union, filed a grievance, claiming the Princeton district was violating its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) because the district did not first offer the vocational education teaching positions to PACE members.

The arbitrator in the case concurred that the school board had indeed violated the CBA, ordered the district to post the jobs for PACE members and “make whole any member who had lost wages or benefits as a result of the use of Great Oaks teachers.”

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A practical application of the arbitrator’s ruling probably would have forced the district to reinstate its in-house vocational education program, maintain the 13 teachers and drop its arrangement with Great Oaks.

Luckily for the school district, the Ohio 1st District Court of Appeals took a different view of the case.

It ruled in February that the Princeton school board had a right under state law to reduce the number of teachers employed for “financial reasons.” The court also ruled that state law trumped any conflicting provisions in the union collective bargaining agreement.

The court did acknowledge that, under the labor agreement, the district did have a responsibility to offer teaching jobs to union members before offering them to non-members.

“But nothing in (the contract) prevented the board from contracting with Great Oaks to provide vocational education teachers,” the court ruling said. “The board did not employ the Great Oaks teachers; Great Oaks employed them. The vocational education positions were not the board’s to fill.”

But a different legal outcome was quite possible, and would have represented a gross distortion of the fundamental purpose of public schools. They exist to serve students, not to employ as many union teachers as possible.

Are schools and unions a good mix?

We certainly understand the union’s motive in this situation. The more members that are employed, the more money the union makes through dues. That’s where the union gets most of its revenue, which it uses to invest in state and national elections to purchase influence with politicians, mostly on the Democratic side of the aisle.

With the 13 vocational education teachers laid off, the union would have had less money coming in.

But that should not be a concern for the Princeton school board. Its job is to provide the best possible education for students at the most beneficial cost to taxpayers. How could it possibly beat free vocational education at no extra cost to taxpayers?

Any business, organization or household, particularly when looking for ways to save money, would be foolish to pay for something that can be had for free. The union’s approach illustrated a complete disregard for the school district, taxpayers and the students it claims to care so much about.

The union would obviously claim in this circumstance that it was trying to save jobs. This notion neglects to consider the other side to the coin. The money saved helped keep the Princeton district afloat. If the district had gone broke, many more jobs would have been lost.

The union’s argument also ignores the reality that money spent elsewhere provides jobs for other people.

How likely is it that the union officials who fought to save the 13 jobs would employ the same logic in their own households? What are the chances any of them would contract for private garbage disposal service when their city provides this service for free, via their tax dollars? What are the chances they would do so even if it meant saving the jobs of unionized sanitation workers?

PACE (like all teachers unions) is a special interest group that focuses on one goal – its own survival. The taxpayers and their children are simply a means to that end.

Considering that ugly truth, could anyone possibly conclude that public schools and labor unions are truly a good mix?

Authored by Yosef Johnson