Germantown Teachers Rally Outside School Board Meeting

About 100 Germantown teachers rallied outside a school board meeting Monday night (October 13), calling on the board to start showing respect for its teachers and begin negotiating a fair contract.

Germantown teacher Kelly Glaser addresses the school board following a rally by teachers.

The teachers -- carrying signs, posters, balloons and flashlights -- sang songs, chanted and applauded speeches from Germantown Education Association President Jo Trask, WEAC President Terry Craney, WEAC Collective Bargaining Director Bob West and others.

Speakers said the Qualified Economic Offer bargaining law is unfair to teachers and the school board should bargain outside its artificial constraints.

"You're the reason our students are Number One in the country, and there is no reason in the world you should have to take the kind of grief you're taking here," West said. "This (QEO) law must change, and it must change now."

"We ought to be be treated as professionals," said teacher Pat Remfrey, "not some sort of bargain at the county fair."

Craney told the Germantown crowd that the arbitration law was an effective way to settle teacher contract disputes for 15 years until the Legislature and governor replaced it with a bad law -- the QEO law -- in 1993. The QEO law has resulted in stalled contract negotiations throughout the state, he said.

"Your frustration level is rising to the point where action is necessary," Craney said.

"You don't want to have to take these actions. You don't want to have to work to the contract. You don't want to have job actions," he said. "What you want and what other teachers in Wisconsin want is reasoned and rational school boards who value your work and value quality education. What you want and the other teachers in Wisconsin want is reasoned and rational politicians who value labor peace and who support a means to settle contract disputes fairly."

After teachers filed into the board meeting, teacher Kelly Glaser of Kennedy Middle School spoke on behalf of teachers, asking the board to work collaboratively with teachers toward negotiating a fair contract.

"Those of us who have spent time together working on building referendums and overcrowding solutions know the power of cooperation," she said. "It seems to me that if the teachers are willing to continue talking, to keep looking for ways to resolve this contract, that the school board should be too. ...

"The structural additions in progress at Kennedy Middle School and the high school remind us that when we work together, we can accomplish great things for kids," she said. "A referendum, a strategic plan, a Village Partnership .... Why not a contract?"

Posted October 14, 1997