Fort Wayne Community Schools teachers get a "morale booster" from the school board:
The Fort Wayne Community Schools Board unanimously passed a resolution Monday night in support of keeping collective bargaining for teachers the way it currently is.
Several teachers in the audience stood up and applauded after the vote.
The board made the move in response to a bill at the Indiana Statehouse that would limit teachers' collective bargaining rights. Under the bill in question, teachers could still negotiate wages and benefits but would not have a say in how schools are managed, evaluated, and organized.
It wouldn't be good for anybody if FWCS administrators and teachers were always in the snarling feud mode. But when the next round of bargaining comes up, I don't know that I'll feel too good about my tax dollars being spent wisely knowing that the teachers have given the school board a standing ovation.
It's nice that "a lot of good has come out of discussions with FWCS teachers' unions over the years," but you don't set bargaining guidelines based on the best negotiations of the most reasonable bargainers. You set them based on the likelihood that some negotiators in the future will make or give in to unreasonable demands.
The state isn't proposing to eliminate collective bargaining for teachers, as the governor did for state employees and officials are proposing in some other states, but to limit them to wages and benefits. That would seem reasonable to most people, I suspect. Most federal employees can't even bargain for wages, let alone "working conditions."
