This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If you are one of Ogden's 700 public school teachers, you received a letter from your school board at the beginning of July stating that the board had suspended collective bargaining with your representative, the Ogden Education Association, and you had until July 20 to sign your 2011-2012 contract or face being fired.
The board also notified you that it would phase out providing pay increases based on the number of years you worked and would replace it with pay increases based on your merit as a teacher.
On July 8 a Salt Lake Tribune editorial praised the district for taking this long-awaited step toward "merit-based pay." According to the editorial, "Ogden is taking a bold step, but it's probably necessary if the district is ever to fully embrace a system that provides real rewards for excellence and recognizes that some teachers with 25 or 30 years experience are, nevertheless, not deserving of pay increases."
The editorial also upbraided the Ogden Education Association for deigning to suggest that it's difficult "to set criteria for good teaching."
I don't know how this predicament strikes you, but I am disturbed by both the school board's decision and The Tribune's editorial. While it's important that the district act to recognize excellence in teaching and reward quality teachers, it's hard to believe the newspaper would embrace using merit-based pay as a fig leaf to conceal the apparent elimination of collective bargaining. Collective bargaining provides one of the critical checks and balances we've built into our the economic system. Unilaterally suspending it undermines the very system we are seeking to redress.
I question, too, the seriousness of a decision that jettisons experience and elevates merit. Anyone connected with the teaching profession knows that experience is a critical component of becoming a good teacher. Surely this is one of the reasons schools provide first-year teachers with a mentor or experienced teacher, so he or she can have someone with whom to discuss lesson plans, teaching techniques and how to contend with those inevitable moments when the strain of dealing with 30-odd young lives becomes overwhelming.
If the school board is concerned about supporting and rewarding quality teaching and raising the level of educational achievement for Ogden students, it can't start by eliminating teachers' collective bargaining.
While it's true that the Ogden Education Association dragged its heels in the previous year's contract negotiations, resulting in the school year ending without a signed contract, the board and teachers are better served if collective bargaining is reinstated and discussions resume, even if this means navigating a complex and possibly messy negotiating process. Isn't this what our democracy requires?
Leslie G. Kelen is executive director of the Center for Documentary Arts in Salt Lake City.