Fairfax School Board Is Playing Footsie With Teachers’ Unions

The Fairfax County School System (FCPS) is in the midst of negotiating a collective bargaining relationship with unions representing FCPS employees.   Work has been occurring behind the scenes for months.  The general public has been kept in the dark.  The apparent intent is to present the public with a fait accompli after FCPS has determined the outcome.  Public hearings, if any, will be a formality.

The unions showed their true colors during Covid.  They did not represent the interests of students or parents.  Their goal was to make life easy for their members, and they were willing to shut down the schools, producing serious learning loss for students and disruptions for families.  Even after the fact, the unions have no regrets about what they did.  See “Fairfax Teachers Union Is Proud About the Covid Shutdowns, Despite Learning Loss,” Aug. 7, 2022.

FCPS has no legal obligation to recognize these unions, and the unions have no legal right to demand a collective bargaining agreement, so it will be a shock to many to learn that FCPS is planning to reward them with more power than they already have.  Citizens should make their voices heard.

Here are the facts:

Virginia Law

Until last year, collective bargaining agreements between Virginia governing bodies and labor unions were prohibited by law, but in May 2021 a new statute became effective.  It allows such agreements if “authority is provided for or permitted by a local ordinance or by a resolution.”  Va. Code §40.1-57.2.  Thus, school boards are not required to authorize collective bargaining.  If they do vote to allow it, they must establish procedures for public notice and for certification of bargaining agents.

Where Things Stand in Fairfax County

To date, the Fairfax County School Board has not adopted a resolution to authorize collective bargaining, nor has such a resolution been publicly proposed.

However, and this is a big however, the School Board is proceeding as if a resolution has already been adopted.  The FCPS website says: “The Fairfax County School Board is expected to adopt a resolution regarding collective bargaining in the coming months.  The resolution will determine the scope and breadth of collective bargaining for Fairfax County Public Schools.”  In other words, there is no doubt that collective bargaining will be authorized; the only issue is its “scope and breadth.”  (See https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/departments-and-offices/office-chief-operating-officer/department-human-resources/collective-bargaining.)

The website further discloses that in the Spring of 2021, in anticipation of the new law taking effect, FCPS established a “Collective Bargaining Work Group” to consider “options and best ways to choose the subjects for bargaining that meet the interest of all of the different groups represented.”

The Work Group includes, in addition to FCPS employees, the two main Fairfax teacher unions (Fairfax County Federation of Teachers and Fairfax Education Association), as well as the Asian Educators Association, Association of Fairfax Professional Educators, Fairfax Alliance of Black School Educators, Fairfax Pride, and eleven other groups associated with FCPS employees.  None of these groups would be expected to question whether it is in the public interest to enact a resolution authorizing collective bargaining.

The websites of the Fairfax Education Association and the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers disclose that the subjects to be covered by a collective bargaining agreement are likely to include salaries, benefits, hours, planning time, limitations on additional duties, leave, health & safety policies, class sizes, reductions in testing, dispute resolution, and others.

Request to School Board for Transparency

Many questions are presented.  What’s going on?  Why has the School Board skipped over the question of whether collective bargaining should be authorized?  Why do the arguments in favor of collective bargaining outweigh the considerations against it?  Why has the public been excluded, while special interest groups have been integral to the process?  How far along is the process?  What will be the language in the Board’s resolution authorizing collective bargaining?  What will be the cost of administering a collective bargaining process?

In an effort to get some answers, I obtained one of the two-minute “community participation” spots at the School Board’s September 15 meeting.  I questioned why the Board was taking it for granted that it was in the public interest to recognize the unions as formal bargaining agents, and I called upon the Board to immediately reveal all that has transpired.  A video of the September 15 meeting is HERE.  My testimony begins at the 1:19:00 point of the video.

Coincidentally, another citizen who spoke at the September 15 meeting raised questions similar to mine.  Her testimony begins at 1:10:10 in the video.

After the meeting, FCPS’s silence has continued.  The requests for transparency have been ignored.

Freedom of Information Act Request

In order to shed light on the matter, I have filed a request for relevant documents under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.  I have been informed that there are about 6,000 pages of electronic records relating to the negotiations, and that it would cost me $3,850 to have the records screened and produced.  Wow!  Obviously, a lot has been happening without public involvement.

The process should have been transparent from the outset, and now it will be very expensive to remove the veil of secrecy.  I am not prepared to shell out $3,850 at this point, so I have informed the Freedom of Information office that I am temporarily deleting my request for online communications, hoping that many of the facts can be revealed by available paper records.  We will see.

Conclusion

This episode is another example of a serious, ongoing problem.  The Fairfax County school system accommodates what it calls its “stakeholders,” i.e., FCPS insiders, teachers unions, minority groups such as the NAACP, gender identity groups, and others who tend to endorse FCPS policies, but parents and other members of the general public are not regarded as members of this club.  See “What ‘Stakeholder Groups’ Does the School Board Seek Input From?“, Jan. 10, 2022.

In this instance, the school system convened a “work group” to consider collective bargaining.  Its membership has been limited to voices on one side of the issue.

This has been FCPS’s regular practice.  Its advisory committees and work groups are generally designed to affirm what the school system has already decided to do.  This modus operandi has been followed in reviewing books challenged as pornographic, in deciding policy regarding transgender issues, and now in considering collective bargaining issues.  Other voices are not asked to weigh in until the outcome has been determined.

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