Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

You asked how many teacher and school administrator contracts have been settled by binding arbitration and whether, on salary issues, arbitrators have more often chosen union or board of education last best offers. This report updates our 2002 report on this topic to include the 2002-03 negotiation season (2002-R-0691).

SUMMARY

Between 1998-99 and 2002-03, school districts negotiated a total of 510 teacher and school administrator collective bargaining agreements. The vast majority (84. 3%) were resolved in the negotiation or mediation phase of the collective bargaining process required under the Teacher Negotiation Act (TNA). Negotiators reached an impasse on one or more issues in 74 contracts. All of these contracts went to binding arbitration but the parties settled over half (38) by stipulated agreements before arbitrators issued rulings. Thus, during the five most recently completed TNA negotiation cycles, arbitrators issued 42 awards on 36 contracts (7% of the total). There are more awards than contracts because six awards were rejected and went to a second arbitration.

Between 1999-00 and 2002-03, arbitrators decided 80 salary issues, choosing school board last best offers (LBOs) 32 times and union offers 48 times, a disparity almost entirely attributable to arbitration awards issued in 2002-03. (Although 1998-99 awards are included in the overall arbitration totals in this report, we cannot include them in the issue analysis because copies of the arbitration decisions are not readily accessible. ) Prior to last year, arbitrators chose school board and union salary LBOs 22 and 23 times, respectively.

Information in this report comes from State Department of Education's annual listing of the settlement status of teacher and school administrator negotiations and from copies of arbitration awards for 1999-00, 2000-01, 2001-02, and 2002-03 on file at the department. (1998-99 awards are not included because they are filed in a different location that is not readily accessible. )

CONTRACT SETTLEMENT METHODS

1998-99 to 2002-03

In each year since 1998, most teacher and school administrator contracts have been resolved through negotiations or mediation. Only a small number of contracts were submitted to arbitrators and an even smaller number resulted in arbitration awards, although the percentage of contracts resolved through arbitration has risen in the past two years. Arbitrators decided issues in 6% of the teacher and school administrator contracts negotiated in 1998-99, 1999-00, and 2000-01; 11% of those negotiated in 2001-02; and 15% of those negotiated in 2002-03.

Table 1 shows the number of contracts resolved at each step in each of the past five years.

Refer to the following website for a continuation of this report:� http://www.cga.state.ct.us/2003/olrdata/ed/rpt/2003-R-0787.htm