Manatee County School District, teachers union identify what they want to negotiate

School District of Manatee County officials and teachers union representatives returned to the bargaining table on Monday as they continued the initial steps of contract negotiations.

The objective on Monday was for each side to determine which elements of the current contract they could live with and which they wanted to revisit. The year 2017-18 is considered an “open-book” negotiation, where everything in the contract, in addition to salaries and benefits, can be revisited.

District officials identified 20 articles in addition to salaries and health insurance that Deputy Superintendent for Operations Ron Ciranna said needed to be updated. Manatee Education Association chief negotiator Bruce Proud said the union’s key issues were all related to pay and insurance.

Some of the district’s updates will just be simple tweaks to language, while others could address more substantive changes, Ciranna said. MEA President Pat Barber said it was impossible to gauge the district’s list of areas they want to tackle until the district lays out their proposed changes.

“Some of the issues on your document could be very contentious issues depending on what you want to do about them,” MEA negotiator Bruce Proud said.

Ciranna said last year’s negotiation was solely focused on salary and benefits, but this year they are hoping to clean up the contract.

“It’s not unusual to be able to review the contract and see which articles should be sun-setted,” Ciranna said. “We want to make sure we develop a contract we are really proud of.”

Ciranna said with the upcoming implementation of a new payroll and human resources management software, now is the time to eliminate dated language or obsolete terminology.

The two sides will reconvene to continue negotiations later this month.

This story was originally published August 14, 2017 at 7:22 PM with the headline "Manatee County School District, teachers union identify what they want to negotiate."