The Bonduel School District is joining the majority of districts around the state that have already done away with teacher and support staff contracts, replacing them with employee handbooks. About two-thirds of Wisconsin school districts started the shift to handbooks two years ago in the wake of passage of Gov. Walker’s budget repair bill, known as Act 10. The law gave administrators the ability to make sweeping changes to such things as hours and working conditions without having to negotiate them with unions. Some school districts put off adopting handbooks by extending contracts already in place when the law was passed. The Shawano School District in 2011 extended contracts for one year, then adopted handbooks for their teachers and support staff last year. The Bonduel School District opted for a two-year extension, which expires at the end of the month. The Bonduel School Board adopted the handbooks Monday. The board spent the last four or five months hammering out the handbooks, which incorporate a lot of the language that was in the contracts, Superintendent Peter Behnke said. Teachers and support staff were given some input into the handbook language, “but not a lot,” he said. Behnke said the transition has gone relatively smoothly, though teachers and support staff are still unhappy about it. “They’re quite dismayed,” Behnke said. “I understand their frustration.” Behnke said he has been on both sides of contract negotiations during his educational career. “It’s very disconcerting,” he said. “Forty years of bargaining has disappeared overnight.” Behnke said teachers and support staff by and large understand that the handbooks were the result of the legislative process and that the School Board’s hands were tied. “The School Board extended the contract as long as they could,” he said. Meanwhile, negotiations on salaries — the only item left open for bargaining — will get under way next month. The School Board has set up two committees to handle salary talks with the teachers and the support staff in hopes of having salary agreements in place by the start of the school year.
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