From the Newport Daily News:
The School Committee and the National Education Association-Tiverton had a mediation session Thursday and set dates for three more this month, but any details of what transpires will be kept under wraps until the two sides come to a contract agreement with the 191-member union or reach an impasse.
“We agreed that as long as there is progress being made we will not make any statements,” School Committee Chairman Jan Bergandy said. “If an agreement is reached or if there is an impasse, then both sides are welcome to say what happened.” …
“Basically there’s a temporary blackout,” Bergandy said of the halt to postings on the School Department Web site during this mediation period.
It’s the way of the world, I guess, that promises about continual flows of information are always contingent upon nothing really delicate being included. Officials tend to look at such provision of documents more as a tool for their own use than a service to taxpayers.
The real unfairness lies in the imbalanced rights provided to union membership, as I described in a video blog, back in September (fast forward to 3:10 for a description of the process):
Essentially, the complaint is that the full union membership gets to vote on the contract and, as reporter Marcia Pobzeznik put it in the quotation above, “come to a contract agreement,” before the taxpaying electorate is brought into the fold. Especially with an unpredictable financial town meeting rapidly approaching, the impression of planning against voters is a real danger. The school committee meetings at which town residents finally have the opportunity to opine on the contract always have the feeling of futility — with the committee merely allowing townsfolk to let off some steam before voting as they’d agreed during mediation and discussed during executive session.
We all know what comes next: Rhode Islanders, generally, and Tivertonians, in particular, are certainly familiar with the argument that contract terms are “locked in” and unavailable for change should voters determine that they need their money more than the town should.
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