Working Together for Students
K-12 teachers, school boards complete another season of contract negotiations By Kelly Hagen, NDU Communications
Another negotiations season for K-12 teachers in North Dakota has wrapped up with relatively few dust-ups. With approximately 179 local associations recognized as affiliates of North Dakota United, there were only two locals that went to impasse on a contract. Most locals came to a tentative agreement in fairly short order. Not all negotiations have to be contentious. All stakeholders in public education – including teachers, education support professionals, administrators and school board members – are on the same side: our students! In West Fargo, negotiators work collaboratively. “We don’t do a true, hard and fast collaborative bargain,” Lisa Dullum, chief negotiator for the West Fargo Education Association, said. “It’s somewhat of a hybrid that 10
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we’ve developed.” Dullum has been part of the negotiations team for West Fargo the last 10 years and estimates they’ve used their collaborative approach for 12-14 years. “I think the benefit of it is that we both have to have that mutual interest, that we have shared goals in mind. One of the board’s goals is always to recruit and retain, and something like maternity leave definitely checks that box.” West Fargo negotiators had first begun to discuss expanded maternity leave during negotiations for the contract previous to this year’s, and was the brainchild of WFEA President Jordan Willgohs. “Someone had sent me some language from a school district in Arizona that was using a bank of leave time,” Willgohs said. “From that language, I worked with Robin Hill,
