Here Comes Labor Peace, Maybe — Teachers-School District Summit Meeting Planned

Their ships sailed so smoothly and swiftly in the few-minutes session that Mr. Mielke could have double-parked and avoided a ticket.

Before parting, they agreed to a summit meeting. Still unscheduled, it figures to be in the next few days, possibly before this week is out.

The conviction of both sides is that this session should restore the labor peace that has been increasingly threatened since the March 12 School Board meeting, now known to Union members as The Night of the Revelation.

All three divisions of School District employees — teachers, classified and management — will be invited to draw up a chair and sit with Supt. Dr. Myrna Cote and David El Fattal, Assistant Superintendent for Finance.

Thanksgiving Already

The hefty, steaming-hot turkey in the middle of the labor negotiating table will be the $500,000 that showed up suddenly and mysteriously last month. Even the District acknowledged the timing “looks a little strange.”

Hopefully just figuratively, everyone will be armed with a butcher knife, to slice off his or her portion of the surprise swag.

One of the thorniest issues to be surgically measured will be the division over how much of the still-changing amount is a onetime rebate, mutually agreed to be untouchable, and how much is ongoing revenue.

Making a Discovery

The most mystical part of the half-million dollars lies in the timing.

The School District announced the unanticipated arrival of the windfall to the School Board a scant 96 hours after the Teachers Union ratified its latest one-year labor agreement. The settlement was based on a different amount of funds being available.

A Winner

Perhaps the larger winner on Friday was Mr. Mielke, who came away with a “whew” expression.

“I am pleased with this meeting because I had teachers ready to make picket signs,” said the Union leader.

A Closer Look

He thought that was needlessly rushing the season.

Criticized by some of his constituents for not being sufficiently aggressive, Mr. Mielke is aware of his every step this spring. He has a rival for re-relection for the first time during 19 years as president.

The first question popped to Ms. Cote after the meeting was:

It sounds as if Friday afternoon defused potential trouble?

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said, cautiously.

Conservative Approach

Ever since Ms. Cote’s arrival from LAUSD in January, Mr. Mielke has lavished more kudos on her and her style than he ever did, cumulatively, upon her predecessor.

In the wake of the meeting, the Union president was passionately upbeat about the present and the future.

Ms. Cote was more reserved. At the summit meeting, she vowed to bring in a starchy fresh, collaborative attitude. With the rancor in retreat for now, she said, “we will try to open more doors and windows.”

Transparency in Style

As a kind of bonus, Ms. Cote mentioned that one of her pressing objectives is to determine how the many arcane details of the baffling periodic budget deliveries can be made forcefully transparent.

“The presentations need to be made more clearly,” she said, “so everyone can understand them, including me.”

Mr. Mielke said that was the kind of spirit he admired.

Timing Can be Good or Bad

This is a story about timing, good and bad.

Friday’s promising ending capped a harrowing week for the typically battling parties.

Twice, the principals almost drove each other off the road to labor peace.

Changing One’s Mind

Here is the way each scenario unfolded and unraveled:

Mr. Mielke said that once some hardline Union members learned a half-million dollars had tumbled in from heaven before they even had a chance to exhale over the new contract, they urged him to act fast and strongly against the District.

The two sides talked, it seems, but without movement. Finally, last Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Mielke and Ms. Cote agreed to meet three days later at 3 o’clock to dig deeply into the essence of their disagreement.

As the Tuesday sun was sinking, two troublesome strands of information churned in Mr. Mielke’s stomach.

Confronting a Dilemma

He had a Union board meeting to address on Thursday, the day before his Super meeting. How could he tell his board, pushing for stern action, that he had no news?

At 5 o’clock, he dialed Ms. Cote’s by-now-vacant office. “I left a message on the answer machine saying that because of my own political realities, I could not face my own board and say I did not have any news,” Mr. Mielke said. “I said I was sorry but I could not keep the promise I made a couple hours before.”

Blindsided

At the School Board meeting that evening, Ms. Cote was shocked when Mr. Mielke publicly took his harshest public stand yet.

He declared that if someone from the School District did not contact him within 48 hours, he would file an unfair labor practice charge.

The Superintendent’s response to this stunner was a District-wide email message to all members of the Teachers Union, sent out at 2:45 on Friday, just 15 minutes before her scheduled meeting with Mr. Mielke.

It is reproduced here:

Then it was Mr. Mielke’s turn to gulp in surprise.

“The last thing I wanted to do was to screw up a relationship that now was going in the right direction,” the president of the Teachers Union said.

When he found out minutes later that Ms. Cote never had received the Tuesday message, but would embraced his explanation, he promptly apologized. That seemed to set the meeting on a peaceful course.