The Hamilton County Board of Education voted unanimously on Thursday to extend Superintendent Rick Smith's contract for four more years, but teachers in Hamilton County have gone without similar contracts for more than a year now.
Mr. Smith’s contract was last renewed just two years ago, leaving him two more years on the original, but a halfway extension guarantees him another four full years.
However, the memorandum of agreement that had previously been guaranteeing working conditions and policies for county teachers with the Board of Education, expired on June 30, 2014.
Since that time, Hamilton County teachers have been working under an umbrella of board policies that relate to most issues a contract would otherwise address, but the absence of a real binding agreement is troublesome to some members of the board and residents.
Prior to voting on Mr. Smith’s contract, board member Dr. Steve Highlander pointed out the issue and encouraged the officials to prioritize addressing it.
The legal agreement handles everything from benefits to leave and a variety of other working conditions essential to maintaining quality support for county educators.
The President of the Teachers Association, Dan Liner, said that he and his co-workers are working toward producing a new memorandum of understanding to replace the expired memorandum of understanding, but he said the board missed an opportunity to address this issue in a timely manner.
When the original agreement expired in June of last year, the board had until December to come into alignment with guidelines set by the Professional Educators Collaborative Conferencing Act of 2011 (PECCA) to set a replacement agreement in place.
However, Mr. Liner said the board “dragged their feet” in not taking appropriate action until November - only a month before the deadline.
Through collaborative conferencing as required by PECCA, the management and teacher groups that Mr. Liner has been working with have drafted almost three quarters of the new agreement, which should be proposed in the coming months.