Saturday, October 11, 2014

D86 Update: HHSTA Asking Community to Remain Vigilant to Ensure that the Board Radicals Do Not Torpedo the Tentative Agreement

From: john.bowman@hhsta.org
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 20:22:34 -0500
Subject: Please Remain Vigilant
Community Members,
First, we would like to thank you for standing up and telling the Board of Education exactly how you feel about their handling of the current contract negotiations at the Monday October 6th board meeting. Because of you, the board chose a new team of negotiators that sat down with our team and hammered out a fair, reasonable, and sustainable tentative agreement that we are quite confident our members will ratify.
Unfortunately, several recent events have occurred since then that we believe are a concerted attempt by the board majority to undermine this recent agreement:
1) The additional round of inflammatory mailers sent out this past week.
2) A recent financial report with questionable financial assumptions that point to a (suddenly) dire financial situation for the district.
3) Rumors of a suspiciously-timed finance committee meeting to take place on Thursday or Friday of the coming week.
We are concerned that these actions are yet further attempts by radical members of the board majority to instigate a strike.
We are writing to ask all community members to remain vigilant in the coming days; we implore you to reach out and share this information with everyone in the community, email the BOE at boe@hinsdale86.org, and show up en masse to all public board meetings and tell the board how you feel. Without your presence and your voice, there is a chance that the radicals on the board will try to torpedo this tentative agreement. Please do everything you can to stop this from happening.
To be clear, if the board chooses not to listen to the voice of the community and votes down this tentative agreement, our last attempt to compromise this past Thursday evening will have been futile. In the face of a total breakdown of good faith bargaining, the Hinsdale High School Teachers Association would have no choice but to strike immediately.

Thank You,
John Bowman (Hinsdale High School Teachers Association President)

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