March 14, 2007

Formal talks on Mosier get started
School board vows to work toward April charter resolution

By ED COX
of The Dalles Chronicle

     Signaling the start of formal charter negotiations between the North Wasco County School District and the Mosier Community School, the district board’s negotiating team met — by itself — for the first time Monday, in anticipation of Thursday’s first sit-down session with the Mosier School’s negotiating team.
     Jason Corey, the district board’s legal counsel and one of its negotiators, said he met Monday as planned with the others: district superintendent Candy Armstrong, chief financial officer Nancy Hall, and board members Ron Stephens and Ernie Blatz.
     As a result of that meeting and communications with the Mosier team, a first coming-together has been scheduled for Thursday between 3 and 5:30 p.m. in the district’s administrative offices.
     The activity came less than a week after the district board formally acknowledged the urgency of the matter at its Thursday, March 8 meeting and promised to do what it could to arrive at an agreement by early April.
     At that meeting, the board attempted to allay concerns expressed by the Mosier community that a drawn-out process would leave the school unable to compete for students and teachers.
     In a carefully worded motion — requested from the audience by Brian McCormick, chair of the Mosier board, and articulated by Wayne Haythorn, the board’s Mosier/Rowena representative — the board stated the following:
     “School District 21 understands that enrollment of students and teachers’ contracts require a stable school by early April, and the intent is to conclude negotiations in a timely manner.”
     Only board member LeAnn Ellett — originally part of the district’s negotiating team together with Haythorn — opposed the resolution, saying she was reluctant to commit the district to a specific timeline for the negotiations.
     “Timing is everything,” Russ Hargrave had argued as one of several members of the Mosier community who stood up at the beginning of the meeting to speak in favor of speeding up the negotiating process.
     “Our inaction is taking the very action we know none of us wants to take,” he said, adding that allowing the process to continue much beyond the beginning of April would be tantamount to “implicitly closing the school.”
     Ron Carroll, leader of Friends of Mosier — which organized a protest at district offices early last week — chastised the district board for proceeding too slowly. “You certainly would not let one of your other schools dangle in the wind like this,” he said.
     Carroll announced to the board that Friends of Mosier has retained attorney Dan Kearnes and would be filing suit against the district unless they start fairly negotiating on an agreed-upon timeline.
     “It’s going to get ... uncomfortable,” Carroll said later of continued actions he is threatening against the board. “They’re not leaving us any choice.”
     McCormick, who had proposed a timeline that would have required a draft contract by March 12 and a finalized contract by March 22, said he “had hoped for something more prompt” from the district but was “happy that something has been scheduled.”
     Of complaints voiced by Carroll that the district wants a new charter, while Mosier is in fact seeking a charter renewal, McCormick said, “It’s just an interpretive question. I think it comes from a misunderstanding of things.”
     He said he hopes the distinction is just a “semantic issue” and added, “I believe that everyone can be satisfied by negotiations.”
     He said Mosier’s team consists of himself, one other board member yet to be determined, and Mosier school principal Carole Schmidt in an auxiliary, support role.
     Ellett said the reshuffling of the district’s negotiating team happened on Friday, and she went off because her schedule wouldn’t permit her to meet.      Haythorn said it was widely perceived that both he and Ellett had clear positions on the charter issues and that someone more “centrist” was preferable.
“I think it will go faster that way,” Haythorn said.