Schools

School District Posts New Teachers Contract Online

Menomonee Falls school officials have put the entire 2011-13 contract on the district's website, however, it may be too late for some.

On Thursday morning, the Menomonee Falls School District posted its new contract with the teachers on its website.

Whether doing so will satisify the more than 100 residents who wanted the details before the contract was approved Monday remains to be seen.

The full 73-page document includes a breakdown of savings reaped by the district through the contract, a contract summary, a Q&A section, and an important dates section.

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Menomonee Falls Patch has also included an electronic copy of the confidentiality agreement signed by the negotiating team and the teachers union in November. It can be found as a .pdf in the photos tab on the article page.

The and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on a two-year contract settlement at , and the after four hours of heated debate.

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The new two-year deal contains about $3 million in savings for the 2011-12 school year, which will go a long way in addressing an anticipated .

However, most residents in attendance at Monday’s meeting were upset that the contract wasn’t available for the public to view and discuss before it was voted on.

“I think it’s clear tonight the public feel they were not informed on this issue. A one-page overhead on the night you are voting is not enough,” said resident Andy Mohfeld at Monday’s meeting. “Give the public more time to digest this.”

On Monday, residents asked the board to delay a vote so they could view the contract and debate its contents. However, members said an agreement signed in November before the negotiating began barred them from releasing the document until it was approved.

Popular radio talk show host Mark Belling said he has lodged a complaint against Superintendent Keith Marty and School Board President Kathy Shurilla with District Attorney Brad Schimel. Belling believes the district violated open records law by not making public the tentative agreement reached with the union on Friday. He said he may also file a complaint against School Board member Faith VanderHorst.

Schimel said he also received another call from a resident who wanted to go through the steps to file a formal complaint regarding the same issue. Schimel said he will meet with his invesitgator next week to map out a course of action for the investigation.

He said he needed to research case law and get more background before he could weigh in on whether the law was violated.

Marty said the district has been negotiating this way for a number of years. He said it borrowed from common practices by other districts when they crafted their confidentiality agreement.

“I think it’s a very common practice when you are in collaborative bargaining, that you don’t really do it in public," he said. "We’ve used this now for a number of years."


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