The Latest from VEA

By Tom Allen

It wasn’t an easy road to a collective bargaining agreement for members of the Falls Church City Education Association, but staying on it led to reaping some significant benefits. Their newly negotiated contract, which took effect July 1, 2024, included, among other benefits, guaranteed step raises and cost of living adjustments; the return of a city retirement match school staff lost in 2008; monthly meet-and-confer type sessions with central office and school board personnel; and “long step” raises for educators who reach the top of the pay scale.

There were intangible benefits, too, says FCCEA President Pam Mahony: “The School Board now recognizes FCCEA as the voice for staff, and both parties are striving to move forward. Falls Church City has always had a strong appreciation for education staff, but entering into a contract with us means that we’re formally allowed a voice in what we know best—how schools work.”

Farrell Kelly, FCCEA’s immediate past president, who was in office when bargaining was first introduced, points to a change in members’ attitudes leading up to, during, and after the negotiations. “The collective bargaining process,” he says, “made many of our members feel like they had a strong voice, not just in the negotiations, but in other issues, too, like school and student safety. What was wonderful is that many of those members were ones who have not traditionally felt like they had that voice. They were empowered, both as individuals and as a group.”

FCCEA began to explore bargaining with the school division in the aftermath of COVID which, in an odd way, may have been helpful. As decisions were being made about when and how to continue instruction, “we had a lot of practice having difficult conversations,” says Kelly.

They needed that practice, as it turned out. “We had largely friendly conversations with the school board leading up to negotiations,” Kelly says, “but it always gets a little harder when you get into how to share or give up power, not just talk about it.”

The first hurdle was working with the school board to create a bargaining resolution FCCEA felt was workable and fair, and it was a challenging one to get over. The board, which had created a collective bargaining committee, at first tried to strictly limit the topics that were open for negotiation. “We felt the first version of a resolution wasn’t acceptable, and negotiations stalled,” says Mahony. “We got together again later, after some backchannel conversations, and the next version was more reasonable. There were still some things in it we didn’t agree with, but we could live with it.”

As that document was being hammered out, FCCEA was already well into a card campaign, and members were able to present the required percentage of signed cards only about two weeks after the resolution was set. Once the cards were in place, FCCEA launched its campaign in the exclusive bargaining representative election.

“Our members had lots of enthusiasm leading up to voting,” says Mahony. “We had ‘I voted’ stickers and other items on hand and we spread the word.” That election, held in May 2023, was no contest. FCCEA easily won the right to represent both the certified and non-certified bargaining staff, getting over 90 percent of the votes from members of both units.

By that July, the union was at the table with a carefully chosen bargaining team. “It’s very helpful, especially in a small locality, to have team members who aren’t just school employees, but also residents of the community,” says Mahony. “We weren’t ‘greedy teachers’ to most of the community, we were neighbors. Several of us had been nominated for local awards or were parents in the community, so they knew we were deeply invested in Falls Church.”

While that may, indeed, have helped, it certainly didn’t guarantee that time at the table would run smoothly. “We had two or three meetings behind closed doors, and they didn’t go well,” Mahony says. “The board almost immediately refused to bargain over and official school division policies, using a clause they’d inserted into the resolution without discussion immediately before voting on it. Because most wages, benefits, and working conditions were tied to some sort of board policy, it greatly limited the scope of our bargaining and brought negotiations to a standstill.”

Clearly, that wasn’t going to work for FCCEA members, so they organized some resistance, which took several forms. They turned out crowds at school board meetings to create public pressure, they passed out information at a local farmer’s market for more outreach, and the local Democratic Party chipped in by issuing a statement of support.

There was a lot of internal communication, too. “Throughout the conflict, we kept FCCEA members and staff who had signed authorization cards informed on how we were fighting for them,” Mahony says, “and support for collective bargaining grew. Members were riled up and paying a lot of attention.”

There was even this: School board members had a “chat with students” session scheduled at a school where members worked with the staff of the student newspaper. Suffice it to say that the school board representatives in attendance were asked some questions by students that they likely had not seen coming.

In the end, FCCEA and the school system turned to federal mediation to help break the deadlock. With the mediator’s services for three full days, and the school board’s new willingness to negotiate matters connected to policy, tentative agreements were reached in late November 2023, just before a December 1 deadline. Quick and easy ratification followed on both sides, and FCCEA members had a new contract. It’s a two-year deal for the non-certified unit and three years for certified staff, set up that way so that future negotiations can be staggered.

“It was very stressful, but worth it!” says Mahony, who’s proud not only of the contracts that came out of bargaining process but of the resulting almost 20 percent growth in FCCEA membership.

Kelly shares those sentiments. “Figuring out how all this works has been good for Falls Church schools in general,” he says. “It’s been very positive for morale and inspired our staff. There are benefits across the board.”

Tom Allen is editor of the Virginia Journal of Education.