By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Teachers in Columbia public schools will make a crucial decision this week that will deeply affect the future of their school district.

Every person with a teaching certificate will have an opportunity to cast a vote to either keep the current “meet and confer” model of school management, or to begin collective bargaining with the Columbia Missouri National Education Association as the exclusive agent for employees, according to the Columbia Daily Tribune.

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It’s a rare instance in which the status-quo is actually better than the alternative.

Under the district’s “meet and confer” negotiation model, teachers have three options for representation: the CMNEA teachers union, the Missouri StateTeachers Association  (a grassroots non-union professional association) or to represent themselves in their employment with the district.

“The CMSTA strongly opposes collective bargaining and therefore did not put its name on the ballot,” local columnist Bob Roper wrote for the Daily Tribune. “The organization thus supports a vote for the ‘meet and confer’ approach. This seems like a sensible approach from its perspective because roughly one-third of CPS teachers are members of the CMNEA, one-third are members of the CMSTA and one third are unaffiliated.”

As it works now, each teacher group works with the school district independently based on the objectives, views and requests of the teachers it represents – “especially pertaining to salary and working conditions,” Roper writes.

If teachers like the union’s perspective, they can join. If they want the liability insurance and legal protections of a professional association without the adversarial approach of teachers unions, they can join the CMSTA. If teachers believe neither is quite right, they can work out their own employment terms with the district, as most professionals in the private sector do.

With the current system, one exclusive bargaining group doesn’t speak for everyone. We believe that’s an important difference from most school districts, where all teachers are forced to join the union and support political  and education policies that are becoming increasingly unpopular.

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Roper gives some examples of what a stronger union would sound like if Columbia educators elect the CMNEA as the exclusive bargaining agent, based on the union’s history of opposition to reform.

“Changes to tenure rules to make it easier to get rid of bad teachers? No way.

“Give parents the option of placing their children in charter schools, virtual schools or private schools through vouchers – in other words, unleash the magic of competition for the betterment of schoolchildren? No support for that.

“Support raising teacher education admission standards? No.

“Support alternative teacher certification that would help mid-career professionals enter the classroom? No, thank you.

“Support a parent trigger law, under which parents could force change with respect to their children’s failing schools? Again, no.”

Roper closes by pointing out that collective bargaining would bring “union-style confrontational tactics” into the city’s public schools, moving away from “the current, more-collegial atmosphere.”

A union negotiated teachers contract likely would remove authority from school administrators to make the best decisions for students, and allow the union an equal (and selfish) voice in running the district.

We also have no doubt the collective bargaining process and the union contract it produces would cost CPS significantly more money than it already pays for labor.

The decision seems simple enough: teachers can vote to adopt confrontational union practices, and lump all educators together with the same loud voice, or they can continue with the current system that gives everyone a say, while at the same time preserving local control to set student interests as the highest priority.