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| Seacoast
Educational Association and Seacoast Educational Support
Personnel Association, NEA- NH Complainants v. School Administrative Unit No. 21
School Boards |
Case No's. T-0340-5
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APPEARANCES Representing Seacoast
Educational Association and Seacoast Representing School
Administrative Unit No. 21. School Boards: BACKGROUND This case resulted from a Petition for Declaratory Ruling filed by the parties as joint petitioners, on May 18, 2001 pursuant to Rule PUB 206.01. Following a Pre-hearing Memorandum and Order, dated June 7, 2001 and designated Decision No. 2001-051, the contents of which are incorporated here by reference, the parties made oral arguments to the PELRB on July 17, 2001. As noted in the Pre-hearing Memorandum and Order, the parties waived the presentation of any witnesses and pre-attached all exhibits, numbered 1 through 11, inclusive to their joint petition. FINDINGS OF FACT 1. The parties have stipulated and presented 13 different factual considerations or circumstances pertaining to the issue(s) they seek this board to address, to wit:
3. The current SESPA collective bargaining agreement is for the period July 1, 1998 to June 30, 2001 (Joint Exhibit Tab 4). Article IT-A of that agreement is entitled "Negotiations Procedure" and provides:
4. The current SEA contract is for the period July 1, 1998 to June 30, 2001 (Joint Exhibit Tab 6). Article II of this document is entitled "Negotiations Procedure" and provides:
5. Despite the unanimous actions taken by the six member school boards (Finding Nos. 1-g and 1-h) and the 5 approvals and 1 rejection by the six legislative bodies, the parties have not implemented the provisions of either the SEA or SESPA successor collective bargaining agreements. 6. All employees covered by each of the CBA's are covered by one recognition clause in each of those documents. The CBA's do not delineate between employees of different member school districts in the language of their respective recognition clauses. 7. Persons covered by the CBA's, whether they be professional employees or support staff; remain the employees of the district through which and by which they were initially employed. In the case of those employees who require nomination, appointment or actual hiring by the SAU superintendent, the vacancy is posted by the hiring district, interviews are conducted, the local school board reviews and votes on the candidate, after which the local school district sends the necessary documents to the superintendent to formalize the appointment and hiring process. DECISION In the general scheme of both the educational budgeting statute, RSA 194-C pertaining to SAU's, and the public sector bargaining statute found at RSA 273-A, there is a contemplation that voters shall have a role in approving expenditures and raising the funds to pay those expenditures. RSA 194-C :9 is insightful with respect to what is required of each participating school district in a SAU, namely, that "each district within a school administrative unit shall raise at the next annual district meeting the sum of money apportioned to it by the school administrative unit board for the expenses of services which each district received" from the SAU central office. RSA 273-A:3 II (b) is even more specific:
The two foregoing statutes provide responsibilities, in the context of the SAU office budget, for "each district within a school administrative unit" and for "either party" who may reopen negotiations upon the happening of certain conditions precedent. Once such condition occurred here in the form of the rejection of the warrant articles by Seabrook voters for both the SEA and SESPA agreements. Our assessment of what happened is complicated, however, by the fact that one of the "either parties" consists of six separate constituent school districts. When we turn our attention to whether the rejection of the warrant articles may be by only one constituent school district or if it must be by a majority of the constituent districts, by weighted voting or otherwise, we find three compelling observations for the former over the latter. First, in the case at hand as well as historically, the six separate warrant articles (Joint Exhibit Tab 9) call for the expenditure of six different amounts of money from six different school districts. Each prospective voter was charged with voting to approve or disapprove only expenditures to be raised and paid by his or her individual community. Voters were not called upon to vote on expenditures for the SAU as a whole, but only for what the cost would be for the community served by their respective school districts. Once the votes were tallied in each district, that district's vote, for or against the contract package, was entered as an approval or rejection, whether the proposition carried by hundreds of votes or failed by a handful of votes. This gives every appearance of being six separate district meeting votes, not a united SAU vote. This brings us to our second observation which is based on the practice of the parties, described to us as being undisturbed since before 1976 in the case of SEA and since 1982 in the case of SESPA (Finding Nos. 1-a and 1-b). Stated one way, the six separate component or constituent school districts have never before failed to approve CBA's by a majority vote in each of the respective district meetings. Stated another, never before, according to the record before us, have the parties used weighted voting, total votes cast or any other technique to pool all votes cast and to determine the outcome by a majority of that pool. They have historically relied on a district-by-district tally. While this appears to be consistent with what is contemplated by statute, it also appears to have established the voting expectations of the parties, namely, that each component unit must approve their respective warrant article(s) by a majority and that majority, be it wide or slim, controls the district's vote to accept or reject the overall CBA package(s). There is no history of any attempts to modify or deviate from this voting process. Finally, following the notion of the voting expectations of the parties, we turn to our third observation which is a manifestation of those expectations, at least in the case of the SEA contract. Article II of the now-expired CBA for SEA is recited, in pertinent part, at Finding No. 4 and specifically provides that any agreement requiring funding for implementation "shall not be binding...until the necessary appropriations have been made by the voters." It also provides that "if such funds are not forthcoming, the Board and the Association shall resume negotiations regarding the matters affected thereby." Thus, in the case of the SEA, no deal is a deal until it is funded. The parties have contractually agreed that lack of funding puts them back at the bargaining table. To come full circle, "no deal" is affirmed by the manner in which the parties have counted their votes, district-by-district and not voter-by-voter. In the case of SESPA,
its now-expired contract has no such language as appeared in
SEA Article II. The old SESPA agreement (Finding No. 3)
provided that the "parties" agreed to "enter
into negotiations.. .in a good-faith effort." In that
situation, SAU #21 was one party and SESPA was the other. In
negotiating the contract, the SAU was discharging its duties
under Under the particular circumstances of this case, we find that the action of the voters with respect to both the SEA and SESPA contract packages caused them to fail for lack of funding, even though other counting procedures or gross numbers may have pointed to a different outcome. Without having these two contracts finalized by the requisite funding authority from the voters, the parties, or either of them, may invoke reopened negotiations under RSA 273-A:3. Given the nature of these proceedings, no remedy is directed. So ordered. Signed this 2nd day
of August, 2001. /s/ Bruce K. Johnson By unanimous decision. Alternate Chairman Bruce K. Johnson presiding. Members Richard Roulx and Richard Molan present and voting. 1
Also know as “constituent school districts” in RSA 194-C:9.
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