Teachers, Board President Take Different Views on D181 Negotiations

A deal on a new contract has been reached between the school board and teachers of District 181, but bad feelings appear to be lingering.

In an email sent Monday, Hinsdale-Clarendon Hills Teachers’ Association (HCHTA) President Justin Horne and HCHTA negotiation chair Mario Castillo said they believe the new contract will keep the district “in good financial shape for some years to come” but criticized the school board’s approach to negotiations and said some teachers felt “uneasy and stressed” about working without a contract.

“The board seemed emboldened by line-in-the-sand negotiation tactics and seemed intent on pushing the teachers to a strike, but the teachers were not willing to let that happen,” the email read.

When the District 181 Board of Education , President Michael Nelson commended the district's teachers for working normally through the negotiations.

Nelson said Tuesday that the possibility of a strike certainly crossed his mind briefly.

“Our hope was that we would always find agreement before anything that drastic needed to occur,” Nelson said.

When asked if he thought the final contract more resembled the board’s offer that went public in August than , Nelson said there was “shared sacrifice” between the two sides.

“I think you can put whatever optics you want around it,” the board president said. “The reality is both the board and the union recognized that we’re in unprecedented economic times.”

According to Nelson, the board’s negotiating team of Yvonne Mayer and Sarah Lewensohn handled the negotiations early, but by the last few mediated sessions, the entire board was involved. He said the board was “completely unified in its view.”

When asked if sessions ever got testy, Nelson said such negotiations “always take on a little bit of a life of their own,” but the two sides ultimately got to the right place.

The email from Horne and Castillo indicated the HCHTA looks back on the sessions differently.

“Unfortunately, these negotiations will always be remembered by the teachers as one based on single-minded ideology, contention and disregard for good-faith negotiations on behalf of the Board of Education,” the email read.

The HCHTA ratified the contract the week of Oct. 17-21. Nelson said the contract is now in full-effect.