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Thursday, April 7, 2005
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Board ready to look to the future
Associate Editor CROSBY -- Perhaps the happiest task of a negotiation-filled day Wednesday was left to Crosby-Ironton School Board members Mike Domin and Carol Pundt who tore down the yellow caution tape that circled the perimeter of the high school parking lot to keep out unauthorized personnel.
The board members were assisted by district Business Manager Bill Tollefson and the group clearly enjoyed throwing the vestiges of an eight-week old strike into the nearest garbage bin.
"Forget and forgive, that's what everyone has to do," Pundt said earlier in the day after the board agreed to a contract with teachers.
She suggested a first step might be to tear down all of the strike-related signs and build a bonfire.
"I think we should have a big bonfire," she said.
For most board members and members of the administration, relief was the strongest emotion they felt at the close of the eight-week-old strike.
"It's been a long, tough haul," Domin said. "This has been tough. We called them sides before -- now we're a school again."
Scott Kile, board chair, opened Wednesday's C-I board meeting at the Ironton City Hall by thanking the board for meeting on short notice and noting the short night the negotiators experienced.
"This has been a very long, trying time," he said.
Kile said the community now has to think about the education of the district's children.
"I think the healing starts in the classroom tomorrow (today)," Kile said. "The community needs to set aside anger and hate."
Board member Bob Sandin thanked Education Minnesota, the teachers' union, for its part in reaching a compromise.
"I think they really took the extra step," he said.
Later, in the high school parking lot where a joint news conference was conducted, Sandin reflected on his own teaching experience. In Connecticut, he was a career teacher, a union president for 10 years and a union negotiator for 25 years. He hopes Minnesota classifies teachers as essential employees and puts an arbitration system in place as Connecticut did.
"It's fair," he said of the system. "It works. The bottom line is the kids don't lose."
He said some teachers might have been disappointed in his actions but he hoped that his experience was helpful.
"I hope I was an asset," he said. "I think a lot of teachers were hoping I could be a voice of reason. I'm just a praying man."
Superintendent Linda Lawrie said she was thrilled for the students and said the agreement, which runs until 2007, provides stability for the district.
"It's a fair settlement for the district," she said. "It's a fair settlement for the teachers."
Mary Nelson, a school board member, said there was a major misunderstanding on the part of some area residents who thought that the board did not want to award teachers a fair contract. She appeared to tear up as she made comments at Wednesday's board meeting.
"There needed to be a way to do this that didn't destroy the district," she said.
Board member Therese Norwood said she visited Cuyuna Range Elementary School before Wednesday's board meeting where her child's replacement teacher was in tears because she would have to say goodbye to the students. Norwood thanked the replacement teachers, adding that she was "very happy" C-I's teachers were returning to their classrooms.
"In the end, it's just a relief," said Norwood, of the end of the strike. "It'll give me a chance to do what I was elected to do, to provide education for these kids."
MIKE O'ROURKE can be reached at mike.orourke@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5860.
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