TEACHER AND SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR
BINDING ARBITRATION AWARDS
By: Judith Lohman, Assistant
Director
June 8, 2010
You asked
(1) how many teacher and school administrator contract disputes have gone to
binding arbitration in the past five years and (2) for the number of issues
arbitrators have decided in favor of school boards compared to unions.
The
information in this report comes from the State Department of Education's (SDE)
annual Listing of Negotiations and Settlement Status and from copies of
binding arbitration awards for 2005-06 through 2009-10 on file at the SDE's offices.
From July 1,
2005 to the date of this report, 83 teacher and school administrator contracts
were submitted to binding arbitration. Of these, arbitrators made awards on at
least one issue in 36. The remaining contracts were either resolved by
stipulated awards between the parties before the arbitrators issued final
decisions or are not available for review.
In the 36
contracts from the last five years that we reviewed, arbitrators made awards on
327 issues. The arbitrators chose the board of education's last best offer on
175 (53. 52%) of the issues and the union's last best offer on 152 (46. 48%).
Table 1 below shows the breakdown for each of these awards.
Table 1: Teacher and School Administrator
Arbitration Awards
Numbers of Board of Education and Union Last
Best Offers Chosen