When District 158 and the Huntley Education Association sat down and set the ground rules for negotiations for the new teachers' contract, the district wanted open negotiations and the teachers' union did not. So the two sides agreed that joint update statements would be released to the media and public twice each month during the process.
Both sides released their initial contract proposals a few weeks ago, and since that time there have been two negotiation meetings. It's time for the next update statement, and on May 2, the district unilaterally released a statement. According to the statement, the teachers union negotiators were not involved in the creation of the new statement. In fact, as you can see from the news brief from the Daily Herald above, "union officials could not be reached for comment" (that's mediaspeak for "they didn't return the reporter's phonecalls).
The school district's press release includes many interesting points, but none more informative than these two, taken word for word from the release:
"The proposal presented by the HEA would bankrupt the District within two years."
"All Board members present at the session stated to the HEA they would not approve any contract which included annual deficit spending."
Why didn't the union negotiating team present an update statement like they were supposed to? Bongo would think that after publishing their initial proposal which called for double-digit increases across the board, they would have been eager to back that document up with detailed explanations for the media and public.
Maybe they tried and they couldn't come up with a nice way to say "we don't care if our raises require a new referendum in order to fund them."
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