F.C. School Board Gives Preliminary OK to Collective Bargaining

$93.6 million allocation to the Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust, which supports initiatives to reduce air pollution. Dominion Energy funded the installation of the related Proterra charging infrastructure.

The Thomas Jouley buses are environmentally efficient, noise pollution-free, and fossil fuel-free. They can seat up to 77 students and travel approximately 135 miles on a three-hour charge. An electric bus reduces operation and maintenance costs for schools by 60 percent. Replacing one diesel bus with an electric bus is equivalent to removing five cars from the road.

Aside from reducing maintenance costs and emissions, the new buses’ batteries will be able to store and inject electric energy into the local power grid during periods of high demand when the buses are not needed for student transportation.

BY NICHOLAS F. BENTON FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS

Following Virginia legislation passed in May 2021, the Falls Church City Public Schools’ elected school board unanimously gave a preliminary OK to a measure that would permit collective bargaining between it and school employees, following the implementation of similar measures in Arlington and Fairfax County.

Collective bargaining is described by the School Board as a negotiation process between FCCPS and a group of employees represented by a bargaining agent, such as a union, to establish employment terms and conditions.

The resolution preliminarily OK’d Tuesday states, “The board has determined that enabling collective bargaining by employees under the terms of this resolution will serve its interest in promoting orderly and constructive relationships between the board and its employees subject, however, to the supreme responsibility of the board to provide the best free and fair public education to students within its legal responsibility to do so.

“The Board has determined that the policies set forth above may be accomplished by (1) granting to Board employees the right to organize and choose freely their representatives; (2) permitting the Superintendent/ FCCPS administration, acting in the interest of the Board, to negotiate and bargain in good faith with Exclusive Bargaining Representatives representing Board employees and to enter into written agreements evidencing the result of such bargaining; and (3) establishing procedures to provide for the protection of the rights of the Board, Board employees, students, and larger community served by the Board.