Deal To Save 10 Teacher Jobs Stalls In District 219

The Niles Township High School District 219 school board did not vote as planned Wednesday morning on a tentative agreement with the teachers union to save the jobs of 10 tenured teachers.

The teachers were notified in February that their contracts would not be renewed for next year, but on Feb. 28, school board president Robert Silverman announced that an agreement that would keep the tenured teachers – and lay off non-tenured teachers instead – had been reached.

The teachers’ union, called the Niles Township Federation of Teachers, voted unanimously to approve the agreement on March 5, and the school board was set to vote at a special meeting scheduled for 7 a.m. Wednesday.

No vote took place because the board could not agree on language inserted by the union.

"We had expected today to vote on specific contractual language that spells out the tentative staffing agreement that was approved in principle by both the District 219 Board of Education and the Niles Township Federation of Teachers “ Robert Silverman, the board president, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the two sides are not in agreement on the language in one specific section.  While the board is comfortable with the language it was ready to vote upon, the union is asking for a significant change. The board cannot agree to that change.  We will continue to work with the union to resolve this issue."

Details of the agreement have not been released, and Silverman declined to comment on what part of the agreement is at issue.

“It’s very frustrating," Silverman said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. “We had a tentative agreement that was verbal. Now they’re asking for a significant change once they see it in writing.”

If the two sides can come to an agreement, the board will schedule another special meeting to vote on it, he said, but the language the union proposed in the letter the board saw Wednesday morning is unacceptable to the board, he said.

The changes in staffing that were approved Feb. 7 are part of a restructuring plan that will place more emphasis on the core areas of math and reading. At the same time, health would be incorporated into sophomore physical education classes and some classes in the applied sciences and technology department would be eliminated, with their content rolled into other classes.

Applied science and technology includes classes ranging from child development and fashion design to business law and automotive classes.

Six tenured physical welfare teachers and four applied sciences and technology teachers who had tenure were told their jobs would be cut. The plan would mean a savings of about $1 million next year, Silverman said at the Feb. 7 meeting.

At the time, he noted that the district and the teachers’ union were negotiating over the way next year’s staffing would ultimately play out, but the Illinois School Code and the existing teacher contract required the teachers to be notified in early February.

Students, parents and teachers have spoken against the teacher layoffs at each of the last two school board meetings, with students often giving impassioned testimonials for physical education and applied science and technology teachers who have gone above and beyond their duties to help students.

The restructuring plan calls for health – now a one-semester stand-alone course in the physical welfare department – to be folded into sophomore physical education, reducing the physical welfare requirement from nine semesters to eight., and for the elimination of some courses in the department of applied science and technology, with the understanding that their content would be covered in remaining courses.

Pankaj Sharma, president of the Niles Township Federation of Teachers, has argued that the district did not need any immediate staffing cuts because it has more than $110 million in reserves, and said the district should use that cushion to soften the blow, cutting positions as teachers retire.

He said he had not seen the school board statement as of Wednesday afternoon and could not comment until he did.