Design

Empowering Voices: Expanding Leadership Participation

Capstone Project 2024

What is it? The Impact:

In order to best serve the needs of our Kalispell Education Association membership, a significant number of members need to be engaged in active union membership. Interest in elected leadership positions has been near zero, and participation in monthly representative meetings has been waning and is inconsistent. Many KEA members recognize the need for KEA’s involvement in school district operations and express gratitude for the work that is done, yet have not stepped up and become consistently active members.

Active union membership can be defined in many ways but the participation in advisory groups, negotiations, building leadership, governance, professional development, communications teams, and educational advocacy programs are areas where current member participation has seen a reduction in both participants and activity. The results of my power-mapping exercise revealed few surprises. Representation from every elementary grade band, middle school and high school is essential. Representation from each building site and varied levels of experience are all necessary to ensure equitable voices are heard. Our negotiations team previously had only a single elementary representative.

Needs Assessment

Building representatives have been hard to replace as many of the people filling these positions have retired in the past five years. Survey results suggest that members are more interested in programming than in traditional 'union work.' Interest in filling the building level position has been minimal. My capstone project aims to change members' perceptions of 'union work', demonstrating that it extends beyond negotiations. Engaging in curricular work is union work. Engaging policy and outreach is union work. Engaging in professional learning programs is union work.

My capstone project aims to engage our members in their area of passion and connect them to how as a union we can be more effective in instituting changes. Without an active membership, KEA would face numerous issues that could impair its ability to function and not be able to provide an adequate level of support and services to members. Communication is a key element in engaging all stakeholders and connecting members to the information they need to be able to do their job. Communication cannot be just one way to be effective. Without our member feedback KEA would not effectively know the issues that our members are facing and be able to respond in a proactive manner. Without a consistently active membership the process of identifying negotiation priorities can lead to a fracturing of the unity necessary for effective negotiations.

Diversity, Equity, and Cultural Competence: Collaborate Purposefully

The foundational competency of collaborating purposefully guides my desire to create alliances among dissimilar positions in our educational community. Connecting high school Advanced Placement teachers, kindergarten teachers, reading specialists, middle school PE, and guidance counselors weaves the educational community together in a way that allows each member to have a distinct voice while helping show similarities. Listening to the needs of our professional counterparts we better understand why a comprehensive negotiation process for a collective bargaining agreement helps provide quality working conditions for all in our bargaining unit. Collaboration is necessary to help find structures and support ensuring everyone from our earliest learners on up are able to access all educational opportunities.

Competencies

Overarching competencies of communication and group processes will be the fundamental thread necessary to help build the leadership capacity of members and improve the organizational effectiveness of the KEA.

The implementation of the expanded leadership program began in the spring of 2023 with the invitation to participate in a negotiation advisory committee. All KEA members were invited to attend a general meeting for more information or fill out a google form to indicate interest. This first step began the year-long process of engaging more members in not just seeking their opinions but also in understanding how they would like to help implement changes. To research and prepare for the negotiation process I attended the AFT’s Collective Bargaining Conference in Washington DC July of 2023. At this conference I attended workshops and keynote sessions detailing the process of building an effective negotiations team, collecting actionable data, and building consensus. The additional focus on the group effectiveness has helped guide our negotiation team process when establishing negotiating priorities.

Survey and Member Engagement

I identified 32 members who expressed an interest in various workplace issues, through an initial membership survey. Those 32 individuals worked together to first develop a membership survey that is more representative and responsive to all of our members and then helped analyze the results of the survey. Through the collaborative development of a membership survey, our negotiation advisory committee was able to engage our entire membership in a conversation about educational values, and perceptions. With over 290 member survey results we were then able to further engage with our members leading to a dialogue of 15 separate listening sessions to discuss the survey results and to put them into a context to develop a negotiations platform. As stated before, this process served two purposes, the first being the specific need of developing a negotiations platform and the second being the identification of and development of new union leader candidates.

Negotiation Process and Outcomes

Developing proposals that serve diverse needs was a challenging place to start, and defined our initial group process. The group dynamic demonstrated compromise and solidarity when challenged. Our bargaining team first worked to raise the starting salary, increase years of service accepted at hiring, and create new pathways for salary advancement sacrificing larger COLAs for veteran teachers. The creation of a new professional development policy through negotiations will help the district train and compensate staff in a more nimble way ensuring fidelity to student success. We then had to hold strong in the face of challenging negotiations that served to divide our bargaining unit. I could not be more proud of the work that our negotiation team put in, and continues as we enter the fall with an expired contract. As our local union prepares to step up labor actions, effective communication to guide our process will continue to be paramount.

Expanded Leadership Program Implementation

The newly engaged members represent a diverse cross section of our staff and they continue to be engaged. As a measure of success, four negotiations advisory committee members were selected to participate in the 2024-2025 TLI cohort. TLI cohort participants from the KEA were not chosen to fill a specific elected position but instead they are chosen to fill a need for advocacy in their respective areas of passion. As an annual process, KEA will seek to strategically engage and select members that can make us more representative and that can challenge us to broaden our vision.

Evidence: