By John McLoone

The Hastings School Board ratified a two-year contract with its teachers’ union in November. However, the matter was back before the board at a special meeting Wednesday night because board member Brian Davis voted in favor of the contract, and his spouse is covered by the agreement.

The matter was included Nov. 23 on the unanimous consent agenda, where several items are handled by a single vote.

At the start of the meeting Feb. 2, Davis recused himself from discussion and vote on the topic, turning the meeting over to Vice Chair Stephanie Malm. The new board, at its third meeting, ultimately approved the contract again, this time with three in favor, two against and two abstaining.

Prior to that, Davis called the meeting to order and called for

Photo by Bruce Karnick a moment of silence for victims of a school shooting in Richfield, Minn., that left one student dead, and another critically injured on Tuesday, Feb. 1.

Malm cautioned the board that the meeting was only slated to last for 30 minutes, as the board had a workshop scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

“I just want to reiterate we have 30 minutes allotted to have this discussion. I would presume everyone would respect that 30 minutes,” said Malm.

Following a motion and a second on acceptance of the contract, board director Carrie Tate, one of three new members not on the board when the November vote was taken, suggested multiple language changes to the proposed contract.

“First, I’d like to say I greatly appreciate teachers. You guys have done tremendous things over the last couple years,” said Tate. “I was very happy to see this contract allows for the highest possible raise we can give you which the budget allows. That’s fantastic.”

Tate said she reviews contracts as part of her job, and she looked over this one for 12-14 hours.

“I have no issues, no qualms with the terms or conditions, any of it,” she said. “However, I am unable to vote for this contract in its current state.”

She said she couldn’t sign off on a “contract where I was not 100 percent happy with its quality.”

“With the fiduciary responsibility that comes with being a school board member and the responsibility to protect the school district from any liability and the responsibility to protect our teachers, I want to see this contract updated,” she said.

She listed several issues that she said were “minor” working changes, but she stressed: “Words matter.”

“It’s really definitional clarifications,” she said. She said that the parties of the agreement were defined at the start of the contract but that what the local union was referred to in later places was not the same.

The contract also calls for creation of a “quality steering committee,” which is new to the contract from previous years and that the committee would be allowed to discuss “educational matters.”

She wanted that language stricken. “I’m requesting that because educational matters is a huge umbrella of potential subjections, potential issues. I’m requesting this be updated to reflect, instead, employment matters of the school district,” said Tate. “In general, the language around that specific committee is very vague. It doesn’t define what’s in scope, what’s out of scope and specifically who’s on the committee. It’s very generic. I’m more hung up on that one because words really matter in a contract.”

“I would be happy if we could get these fixes in there, and maybe Stephanie, with your legal expertise, if you would be willing to read it because I’m sure you’d catch things I didn’t,” said Tate.

Board member Lisa Hedin thanked Tate for taking the time to review the contract, but pointed out that the board’s task at the meeting was not to redo the contract that was reviewed by a previous board, but to fix the vote.

“The work has been accomplished as completed. There was a clerical error, and we should just be cleaning that up. That’s the work at hand,” she said.

Board member Jessica Dressely pointed out, “It wasn’t a clerical error. It was a legal error. I want to clarify that.”

Said Hedin, “It was an oversight. We were new to the concept of the consent agenda, and it was an oversight. That’s all it was.”

Tate defended her thorough review. “While me going through this contract in detail was not required of me, I feel that any contract put before me to vote on requires my due diligence,” she said.

Following a reading of the resolution to support approval of the contract, Malm, Beissel and Hedin voted in favor, Tate and Mike Reis voted in opposition and Dressely abstained. Davis recused himself from voting.

The vote drew a big round of applause from the audience at the meeting, many of whom were staff members.

Photo by Bruce Karnick

Carrie Tate spoke passionately about her support of the teachers and how thrilled she was that the new contract gave them the maximum raise possible because they deserved that and more. Tate explained that her sole issue with the contract was based on terms used and definitions written in it that were either conflicting, confusing or accidently identified the wrong chapter of Education Minnesota.