Vermont-NEA News

Vermont Supreme Court Rules School Boards Can't Use Open Meetings Law to Force Public Contract Talks With Educators

Vermont Supreme Court Rules School Labor Negotiations Not Subject to Open Meeting Law

In unanimous ruling, court rejects Vermont School Boards Association push to force public bargaining

MONTPELIER – The state’s highest court on Friday unanimously rejected a Vermont School Boards Association-backed assertion that the state’s Open Meeting Law required boards and local education associations to conduct contract talks in public.

“We hold that collective bargaining labor negotiations…are not ‘meetings’ under the Open Meeting Law,” Justice Harold E. Eaton Jr. wrote for the court in Negotiations Committee of Caledonia Central Supervisory Union v. Caledonia Central Education Association.

The matter was argued before the Supreme Court after the school board rejected a Vermont Labor Relations Board finding that said the Open Meeting Law does not apply to labor negotiations. The Caledonia Central Education Association, represented by Vermont-NEA lawyer Rebecca McBroom, argued before the labor board – and again before the Supreme Court – that applying the Open Meeting Law to contract talks would disrupt decades of labor practice.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion we have: that the Open Meeting Law was never intended to force public bargaining,” McBroom said. “This is a good ruling for labor relations, and it means that local educators and local school boards can have robust and productive contract talks as equals at the table.”

The case came about in 2016 when the negotiating committee for the Caledonia Central Supervisory Union said that contract talks with educators had to occur in public, adopting a relatively new assertion pushed by the state school boards association. The education association rejected that argument, and contended that talks be held in private as they have in the past. The school board in December 2016 asked the Caledonia Superior Court to rule that the Open Meeting Law applied; that court ultimately dismissed the board’s suit saying the Vermont Labor Relations Board was the appropriate venue.  The school board appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, resulting in today’s ruling.

Earlier, in a similar dispute between the Washington Northeast Supervisory Union and the Cabot Teachers’ Association and Twinfield Education Association, the Vermont Labor Relations Board ruled that the Open Meeting Law could not be used to force public negotiations.

The Supreme Court argued that the Open Meeting Law itself is ambiguous on whether it applies to labor talks. However, the court concluded the intersection of that law with the Public Records Act, the Labor Relations for Teachers and Administrators Act, and decades of past practice make it clear that the Open Meetings Law does not compel public contract talks. “Considering the sensitive nature of certain negotiation topics – such as references to individual employees or private information regarding specific personnel – we find it unlikely the Legislature chose not to provide a mechanism for a committee and a teacher’s association to negotiate privately in these instances,” the court said.

The court also made clear that contract talks are meetings of equal parties, and applying the Open Meeting Law would upend that balance. “We are especially gratified that the Supreme Court reaffirmed that educators and school boards are equals at the bargaining table,” McBroom said.  

The court also outright rejected the newly formed VSBA assertion that the law requires public bargaining. For decades, the court pointed out, teachers and school boards have conducted bargaining in private. “We are hard-pressed to believe that the experienced lawyers engaged in labor negotiations of this type overlooked this issue until recently,” the court said.

The court also pointed out that provisions in the Public Records Act related to teacher bargaining stand squarely in opposition to an argument that bargaining must be done in public. The court specifically said that prohibitions on the release of certain documents “makes little sense if the earlier aspects of negotiation have been conducted in public.”

You can read the decision here.

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