Bill: All Concession Savings Must Offset RIFs

NJSBA is opposing a bill, S-1940 (VanDrew, Ruiz), that would require that savings achieved through concessions at the bargaining table be used to offset any reductions in force.

NJSBA believes the bill is unnecessary and will infringe on local school boards’ responsibility to represent the public’s interest.

“Since the announcement of drastic school aid cuts in March, over 85 percent of the state’s local boards of education asked their teachers’ associations to reopen existing agreements, with the goal of establishing wage and benefit concessions,” reads NJSBA’s position statement.

“Where contracts have been reopened, we believe that the goal of local school board has been preserving teaching positions to the greatest extent possible.  Consequently, in these extraordinary financial circumstances, legislation like S-1940 is unneeded.”

It continued, “In a better economy, the legislation will serve only to interfere with the basic responsibility of local boards of education to provide educational services in the most cost-efficient manner possible.  It would severely undermine their ability to carry out this responsibility by eliminating the managerial prerogative to allocate money saved through wage concessions for any purpose that would serve the interests of students and taxpayers.”

Introduced May 20, S-1940 stipulates that when a school district implements a reduction in force for reasons of economy or other good cause, if a collective bargaining unit agrees to a wage or benefit concession during the time that a collectively negotiated agreement is in effect, or continues in effect by operation of law while a successor agreement is being negotiated, then the amount of money otherwise necessary to fund those wage and benefit concessions must be applied by the district to maintain bargaining unit staff member positions.

NJSBA believes that local school boards’ duty to negotiate must be secondary to their duty to educate the children in the district. Collective bargaining in New Jersey’s public schools must be structured to provide an appropriate balance between school boards’ negotiations obligation and boards’ statutory rights and responsibilities to provide a thorough and efficient system of free public education.

S-1940 was scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Education Committee on June 3. A companion bill, A-2772 (Albano, Ramos), was introduced simultaneously, but no hearing has been sc

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