Teachers Union, School District Seeing Red Over Contract, Budget

Red shirts have taken on a certain significance are West Bloomfield, so it wasn't unusual to see a sea of red packed into the  media center twice last week for West Bloomfield School Board meetings.

The red-shirted teachers were taking off on an idea that Jaime Lindstrom had at a picnic two summers ago.

“My husband works for Rochester (Community Schools), and in the summer of 2009 (their teachers union) ,” said the  second-grade teacher. “They passed out shirts that all had the same color, so I said, ‘We should have that.’ The red just signifies how the school district is so badly ‘in the red.’ ”

Teachers, represented at the local level by the West Bloomfield Education Association (WBEA), have been picketing since May 2010 to protest the proposed contract from the school board.

The district ended the  2009-2010 school year with a fund balance in deficit of $1.7 million. Teachers have been in negotiations with the district since October ’09 to seek a successor to the contract, which expired in August 2010.

Five months later, the teachers ordered shirts to indicate their displeasure with the lack of progress.

“It was five months of stonewalled negotiations before we ordered them, so it had gotten to the point where there’s not a lot we could legally do to get a fair contract,” said Kevin Walsh, 46, a video productions teacher at West Bloomfield High since 2000. “But, we don’t have a dress code.”

The point wasn’t lost on Lindstrom, a 28-year-old West Bloomfield resident who has taught at Doherty for five years. She said that the shirts became so popular with the WBEA that she quickly lost control of orders.

“We all wear our shirts on Fridays,” Lindstrom said. “Some schools wear them twice a week … we started making lanyards, pins, and red ribbons, because it really caught on and the people we met wanted to show their support.”

Walsh still remembers the first Friday that teachers wore the shirts. “It was an amazing experience, where people were smiling and high-fiving,” Walsh said. “We feel like we’ve got a target on our backs and this is a measure of solidarity.”

Cyndi Austin, Uniserve director for the Michigan Education Association, has nine years of experience in negotiating contracts on behalf of teachers unions in Michigan. She said that the shirts represent one of several “crisis activities” which can take place when unions feel “attacked.”

“We need to have visibility in public,” Austin said. “The stalemate makes us feel attacked. The superintendent has ‘coffee talks’ to get her message out there, and these are our ways.”

According to Walsh, superintendent JoAnn Andrees has expressed a degree of support for the protest.

“When we started wearing them, (Andrees) complimented our union leaders by saying she’s glad there’s been no impact on classroom learning because of the red shirts,” he said.

Lindstrom agreed that children have not voiced concern with the protest. I had one kid ask one time why are we all in red, he asked if they get them, too,” she said. “I told him, it’s just the teachers showing they’re all working together. It’s not something that comes up in class.”

"It's become routine," Andrees said. "It's only symbolic. It doesn't affect the educational process and it doesn't detract from contract negotiations. Maybe initially it did, but now it's just become part of the landscape."