COLORADO SPRINGS — During a special meeting Wednesday night, the Colorado Springs School District 11 Board of Education voted 6-1 to eliminate the board's longstanding master agreement with the Colorado Springs Education Association (CSEA), a local teachers union.
The master agreement between the union and the board has been in place since 1968. The meeting drew hundreds of teachers, parents, and community members to the D11 Administration Building to voice their support and opposition to the master agreement.
Marsha West, a teacher at Mitchell High School and a CSEA member, said the union agreement is important because it guarantees things like pay, benefits, lunch breaks, time to make lesson plans, and limits class sizes. She said without the agreement, many D11 teachers could choose to leave or go on strike.
"I've been a proud D11 employee for 29 years. I don't want to go to a different district, but I also can't imagine working without a master agreement," she said.
Daniel Riecks, an eighth-grade teacher at Russell Middle School and a CSEA member, said the agreement also provides job security to teachers who speak up about workplace issues.
"We have teachers that are overworked and, you know, we can complain about being underpaid, but that's, at the end of the day, not really what it's all about. It's about knowing that we have somebody in our corner if and when things go wrong," said Riecks.
The group D11 Momentum made up of community members, parents, and teachers showed up to the meeting to protest the master agreement. Joel Sorensen, a community member part of D11 Momentum, said CSEA should not share decision-making authority with the school board, as outlined in the master agreement.
“The union, which is a special interest group and a very partisan special interest group, advocates for the Democratic party nationally and locally," said Sorenson.
During the meeting, the majority of the school board members agreed that CSEA should not get to make decisions on behalf of the district.
"You want decisions to be made by people who are accountable to the voting public. Us up at the board dias, we're accountable through elections that occur every other year. There is no mechanism for holding CSEA as a private company accountable to the voters," said Board Director Thomas Carey.
Board Director Jill Haffley said teacher working conditions and other benefits will still be outlined in an employee handbook.
Many teachers part of CSEA, like Laura Andujar, a teacher at Christa McAuliffe Elementary School, said the future is uncertain.
"We have many plans in the works right now. We are meeting together. We're coming together, hearing each other's stories," she said. "We know what we're doing for kids is good and that our students care about us."
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