Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for October 30, 2001 Short...But Not So Sweet.

Bargaining teams for the Board of Education and the Cairo Association of Teachers met last night for a total of 25 minutes...

The outcome? The counterproposals that were to have been exchanged on September 13th...that were postponed until October 25th at Board request...that did not happen even then because the Board did not prepare one...those counterproposals will now (?) "tentatively" be exchanged at 10:00 a.m. on November 30th. You read that right...yet another month of delay!

The Board team indicated that it had not had time to prepare a counterproposal. (Only two months?!) The Board team indicated at the beginning that they did NOT anticipate making any progress at last night's meeting since a new Board was to be sworn in on November 7th.

Then why meet, you might ask? Their answer...they had promised back in August to meet and they wanted to show that they were willing to sit down with us and negotiate. Only one slight problem with that rationale...they had nothing new to offer.

So why did we really meet? The Board knows that it is looking bad...that it unilaterally halted negotiations for six weeks. The Board needs "evidence" that it is negotiating in "good faith"...which we all know it is not. When the CAT files a complaint with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board that the Cairo Board of Education is not complying with the law, the District can now proudly and defiantly point to October 29th and say that they did engage in negotiations. Well...that claim simply will not hold up to even the most casual scrutiny.

Your Bargaining Team will proceed on two fronts. We will inform legal counsel of the stalling tactics being employed by the administration of Cairo School District Number One and explore legal remedy. We will also brush the cobwebs off of our September 13th/October 25th counterproposal and hope to exchange it with the Board of Education on November 30th.

Each time that you think that you have seen the worst that Cairo School District has to offer, they always seem to find a way to outdo themselves.