Schools deny union grievance over librarians

Kalispell school trustees denied a grievance from the district’s teachers union Tuesday.

The Kalispell Education Association filed the grievance on behalf of the district’s elementary school librarians. There is one less library position between the five schools this year, which means most libraries are not staffed all day, every day.

Only Edgerton School’s library has a full-time librarian. Other librarians travel between school sites.

While instructional time — time students spend weekly in an actual library class — is the same as last year, other library time has been affected. Students no longer have as much time to simply drop by the library to browse, and librarians worry that special programs, such as book fairs and author visits, might fall by the wayside.

According to the grievance, the librarian shortage has had a negative effect on the remaining employees — teachers as well as the librarians.

“This reduction has caused a change in the working conditions for those still employed as librarians for [Kalispell Public Schools] and a change in the professional services available to all other elementary employees,” union President Mike Thiel said, reading from a statement he had prepared for the meeting.

The grievance says the shortage violates an article in the district’s collective bargaining agreement that says Kalispell schools’ policies involving employment must be maintained at the “highest minimum standards” in place when the agreement was signed. The district can’t change those standards without bargaining a new agreement with the union, Thiel said.

But “highest minimum standards” is a vague statement; school attorney Jeff Hindoien called it “horrifically ambivalent.”

“It’s not clear about what it applies to. That’s a big part of the problem,” he said.

The grievance also cites the fact that the district is violating state accreditation standards with its librarian shortage. According to state standards Edgerton, with its 540 students, should have the equivalent of 1.5 full-time librarians. This year, it has 1.4 librarians.

The other four elementary schools each should have the equivalent of one full-time librarian. Instead, each has 0.8.

But Superintendent Darlene Schottle pointed out that the district is out of compliance in other areas as well. Most of its kindergarten, first- and second-grade classrooms have more students than state standards allow. The union has not filed grievances about those issues.

Thiel explained why at the meeting.

“The district, in discussions with this grievance, has tried to distract the KEA with such questions as, ‘Why hasn’t the KEA filed a grievance over other violations of accreditation standards?’” he said.

In those violations, the district has at least provided teacher aides that have helped classrooms come closer to meeting standards, he said. But no such provision has been made for the library staff, which has “fundamentally changed” their working conditions.

Instead of being allowed to keep libraries open for students and staff, when they aren’t teaching classes, librarians are covering for teachers who need prep periods or lunch, Thiel said.

The grievance originally was filed in June, shortly after the elementary trustees approved a budget decision that included not filling a retiring librarian’s position.

The decision was part of a third level of cuts district officials proposed to eliminate a $603,000 shortfall in the 2010-11 elementary budget. The district had hoped to make up some of the deficit through a voted levy, but taxpayers rejected the $338,000 levy request in May.

Because the general fund budget wasn’t final when trustees approved not hiring someone for the vacated library position, the union agreed to an extension to the grievance, human resources director Karen Glasser said. But when the board approved the budget in August, the grievance was live again.

First the grievance went to Glasser, who denied it.

Nothing in the district’s existing policy or contract language says Kalispell has to maintain a set number of librarians, or even a set number of staff, she said. Shuffling librarians’ schedules is within the district’s rights, she said.

“We do not believe this is a violation of the contract,” she said. “We did change the schedule of librarians, but that is within the district’s managerial rights.”

As for the complaint about not meeting library accreditation standards, the district is accountable to the state, not to the union, for that, Glasser said.

“We recognize it’s not a preferable thing, but it was a choice that was made during budget reductions,” she said.

From Glasser, the grievance went to Schottle, who denied it on the same grounds as Glasser.

From Schottle, it went before the elementary trustees. High school trustees heard arguments on both sides of the issue but did not vote because the decision not to fill the library position originally had been an elementary board vote.

The elementary trustees unanimously sided with Schottle and Glasser, in part because of the precedent siding with the union might have set. The district is facing an even more significant budget shortfall next year, and although officials have agreed to consider filling the library position, other departments are at risk of losing staff.

“Anything we do, any move that we make budget-wise is going to have an effect. It’s going to affect somebody down the line,” trustee Alice Ritzman said. “It’s changed the working conditions — yeah, it has, and we’re probably going to make a lot more decisions that are going to do the same thing. I don’t see how we can sidestep that.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.