What a Teachers Union Contract Says and Why Every Parent Should Read One

There is a document in your school district that decides who teaches your child, how long the school day lasts, whether a principal can move a struggling teacher and what happens when budgets tighten. It has more force than most votes the school board will take this year. It is public. And almost no parent has ever opened it.

It is the collective bargaining agreement, usually called the contract, between the district and the teachers union. This post is a guide to reading one. It is not an attack on teachers, who are mostly people trying to do hard work well. It is a case that parents, taxpayers and board members should know what has been agreed in their names.

What a collective bargaining agreement is

Collective bargaining is the process by which an employer negotiates the terms of employment with a union that represents a group of employees, and the collective bargaining agreement is the written result. In the private sector this is governed by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Public school employees are not covered by that federal law. Instead, public-sector bargaining is set by state law, which is why the rules differ so much from state to state. Some states require districts to bargain with a teachers union, some permit it, and some sharply limit it. Wisconsin, for example, narrowed public-sector bargaining in a 2011 law known as Act 10, one of the best-known state changes in this area.

The contract binds the district for a term, commonly several years. It is negotiated by a small team on each side: the district's representatives, who answer to the school board, and the union's representatives. The board approves the final agreement in a public meeting. When the contract expires, the parties bargain again, and that renewal is the moment when a parent or taxpayer has the most leverage.

There is a point worth pausing on, because it explains why this document is political in a way a private contract is not. In a private company, management and labor sit on opposite sides of a table with a shared interest in the company surviving. In a public school, the union helps elect the board members who then negotiate with the union. Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unions, wrote in 1937 that collective bargaining as usually understood could not be transplanted into the public service. We explore his reasoning in How Teacher Unions Won the Right to Bargain, and What FDR Warned About and in Public-sector unions, and why FDR doubted they could bargain at all. For now, simply notice that the other side of the table is accountable to voters, and that most voters never read what was signed.

Where to find it

You do not need a lawyer or a records request in most places. Many districts post their current contract on their website, usually under a heading like Human Resources, Labor Relations or Board Policies. If you cannot find it, call the district office and ask for the current collective bargaining agreement with the teachers association. State public-records laws generally make the agreement a public document, and if a district is slow, a short written request will do. We explain how to make one in How to Request Records From Your School District and Actually Get Them.

Read the whole thing at least once. Many agreements run to dozens of pages, and most of them follow a recognizable pattern. Here are the sections that matter most.

The salary schedule: steps and lanes

The pay section nearly always contains a grid. Down the side are steps, which correspond to years of service. Across the top are lanes, which correspond to education credentials: a bachelor's degree, a bachelor's plus a number of graduate credits, a master's degree, and so on. A teacher's pay is the cell where his step and lane meet.

The grid has a logic. It is predictable, it is transparent, and it prevents favoritism, which is a real benefit and the reason many principals and teachers defend it. A new teacher can see what she will earn ten years from now.

It also has costs. Notice what the grid pays for: years in the job and credits earned. It does not pay for how much students learn, for teaching a hard-to-staff subject, or for working in a school that struggles. Two teachers on the same cell earn the same pay though one is far more effective than the other. And a teacher who is excellent in her third year earns less than a mediocre teacher in his fifteenth.

The question to ask the board is a simple one: does any part of the schedule pay more for hard-to-fill assignments or for demonstrated results, and if not, why not? A few districts have added stipends for math, science, special education or high-poverty schools. Some contracts allow them; some restrict them.

Also look at how the schedule rises over time. A contract that promises a certain step increase each year plus a cost-of-living adjustment can quietly lock in a rise in the budget every year, whatever the district's revenue turns out to be. That is a commitment, and the board should know the total cost over the life of the agreement, not just the first year.

Seniority, transfers and layoffs

Next come the sections on transfers and reductions in force, which is the technical term for layoffs.

Many contracts give seniority a decisive role. When a teacher wants to transfer to another school, the senior applicant may have a right to the position over a more junior one, even if the principal would prefer someone else. And when the district must cut positions, a common rule is last in, first out, often shortened to LIFO: the most recently hired teachers are laid off first, regardless of performance.

The defense is respectable. Seniority is objective and hard to manipulate. It protects experienced teachers from being dismissed for being expensive, and it prevents a principal from retaliating against a teacher who spoke up.

The objection is just as real. Under LIFO, a district that must cut by ten percent loses its newest teachers, some of whom are among its best, and keeps some of its weakest because they have been there longer. Since newer teachers are often assigned to the hardest schools, the cuts can fall hardest on the children who can least afford the disruption. It is the same dispute that was at the center of the California case we cover in Vergara v. California, the Lawsuit That Put Teacher Tenure on Trial.

When you read this section, look for three things: whether layoffs follow seniority alone, whether the district can exempt hard-to-staff subjects, and whether performance counts for anything.

Evaluation and dismissal

The evaluation section describes how teachers are observed and rated, how many times a year, by whom, and with what consequences. Look for language that limits what can count in an evaluation. Some contracts restrict the use of student test results. Some require advance notice of every observation. Some set a long and detailed process a principal must follow to document a problem before a dismissal can proceed.

Tenure, where it exists, is usually set by state law and not by the contract, but the contract can add procedures on top of it. Teachers are not like other professionals who hold their jobs at will, and in a public school there is a reasonable case that a teacher should be protected from firing for political or personal reasons. The question is how much process is enough. When the procedure for removing a teacher who is plainly failing takes years and tens of thousands of dollars, many districts do not try, and the cost falls on the children assigned to that classroom.

The test to apply is not whether the contract protects teachers, which it should, but whether it protects them from arbitrary action or from any action.

Grievance procedures

The grievance procedure is how disputes about the contract are resolved. A teacher who believes the district violated the agreement files a grievance, which proceeds through steps: the principal, then the superintendent, then often the board, and finally, in many agreements, binding arbitration before a neutral third party.

Grievance clauses matter because they give the words of the contract their practical force. A rule that cannot be enforced is a suggestion. At the same time, a long chain of steps means that a district may spend a great deal of money and time on small disputes, and managers sometimes decide it is easier to avoid a decision than to risk a grievance. Read the list of what can be grieved. A narrow list is a fair mechanism. A broad list, which treats any disagreement as a contract violation, can paralyze a school's management.

Class size, prep time and the school day

Agreements often contain working conditions that sound technical and shape every day of a student's life:

• Class size limits, or targets, and what happens if a class exceeds them (extra pay, an aide, or a grievance).
• Preparation periods, a guaranteed block in the school day for planning, which the contract may fix by the minute.
• Duty-free lunch, limits on supervision duties, and caps on meetings outside the school day.
• The length of the school day and year, sometimes down to the minute the teacher's day begins and ends.
• Rules on assigning extra responsibilities, such as tutoring, coaching or covering a colleague's class.

None of these is unreasonable by itself. Teachers need planning time, and a class of forty is not a class. But in combination they can limit what a principal may do with a schedule. If you want a school to offer a longer day, a new tutoring program or a more flexible bell schedule, the contract is the place where you will discover whether it can be done.

Paid release time

One of the more revealing clauses concerns paid union release time, which allows teachers who are union officers or representatives to be paid by the district while they work on union business instead of teaching. A contract may release a union president full-time with salary and benefits paid by the district, or give a bank of paid days for union activity.

Defenders argue that someone must handle grievances and bargaining and that districts benefit from a workable relationship. Critics respond that taxpayers are funding the activity of an organization that lobbies, endorses and campaigns, and that students lose a teacher from the classroom. Whatever side you take, the amount is public and the question is fair: how many positions, at what cost?

In 2018, in Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court held that public-sector employees cannot be required to pay union fees as a condition of employment, because compelled payments to a public-sector union violate the First Amendment rights of non-members. That decision changed the financial footing of public-sector unions and gave teachers a choice they did not have in many states. We have a Q&A on it in Janus v. AFSCME for Teachers, Eleven Questions About Union Fees. Notice what Janus did not do: it did not abolish bargaining, and it did not change the contract's provisions. It changed whether a non-member could be forced to pay.

The best case for the contract

I want to give the other side its due, because the strongest version of the case is not trivial.

Unions arose because workers acting alone are weak against an employer. In public education the history includes low pay, arbitrary dismissals, and a lack of any voice for teachers in decisions about their classrooms. A teacher who disagrees with a principal about discipline, curriculum or safety needs some assurance that she will not be punished for it. A union gives teachers a collective voice and negotiates for working conditions that help students, such as reasonable class sizes. Conservatives who admire the dignity of work should respect the instinct for association, which Tocqueville saw as one of the great strengths of American life.

I agree with all of that as a matter of principle. Where I disagree is on how the principle works out in public schools in practice. The employer in a public school is not a profit-seeking owner. It is a public body that spends other people's money on behalf of other people's children, and the people who bear the costs of the agreement, parents and taxpayers, are not at the table. That asymmetry is the reason to read what is signed.

How to use the contract: questions for the board

Here are practical questions a parent can bring to a school board meeting, especially at renewal time. None of them is a demand. They are questions that deserve public answers.

1. What is the total cost of the agreement over its full term, including step increases and benefits, and how is it to be paid for?
2. Does the contract allow the district to pay more for hard-to-fill positions or for results, and if it does not, did the board propose it?
3. What would happen to the district's most effective newer teachers in a layoff?
4. How long does the dismissal process take, and how many times in the past five years has the district completed one?
5. How many paid release positions does the district fund, and what do they cost?
6. What are the class-size and scheduling rules, and do they limit a longer day or extra tutoring?
7. Will the board hold a public hearing before it votes, and when is the text of the proposed agreement posted?

Bring the questions in writing. Public bodies tend to answer what is on the record.

What the numbers add

If you want to see what the staffing side of a district's budget looks like, read The School Staffing Surge, Hiring Outpaced Enrollment for Decades. If you want to know who has the power to change a contract term, read Who Actually Runs Your School District, Board, Superintendent or State. And if you want to know whether the money is producing results, start with Real Spending Per Pupil More Than Doubled Since 1970, So Where Are the Gains. These posts and this one are parts of the same inquiry: where does the money go, who decides, and what do the children get?

A word about fairness to teachers

One last point, because it matters. Many teachers privately dislike some of what their contracts contain, and many would welcome pay for performance and a faster way to deal with a colleague who cannot do the job. The best teachers have the most to gain from a system that distinguishes among them. A reform aimed at the structure of the contract is not an attack on teachers. It is an invitation to pay the good ones more.

The case in brief

1. A teachers union contract is a public document that governs pay, transfers, layoffs, evaluation, class size and the school day.
2. The salary schedule rewards years and credits, and the seniority rules decide who is laid off first, without reference to how much students learn.
3. Dismissal and grievance procedures protect teachers from arbitrary action but can make it very hard to remove a failing teacher.
4. The contract is negotiated by a board that the union helps elect, so parents and taxpayers who are not at the table should read it.
5. Reading the agreement and asking the board specific questions at renewal is the most effective thing a parent can do.

What you can do: find your district's current teachers contract on its website or request it from the district office, and read the salary schedule, the layoff clause and the dismissal procedure before the next renewal.