From The Coloradoan (Fort Collins):  Consensus is that life in Poudre School District won’t change if voters approve a ballot question requiring that negotiations over school district employee contracts be held in public.

Proposition 104 proposes an amendment to the Colorado Constitution requiring local school boards or their representatives to negotiate collective bargaining agreements in open meetings.

PSD is among the approximately one-quarter of Colorado’s 178 public school districts that have collective bargaining agreements.

It is also one of the few that allows members of the public to sit in to observe as the process unfolds, something that started in November 1992. Poudre Education Association President Greg Grote described it as an effective and “peaceful” process.

“Really, I don’t think it’s (Proposition 104) going to have much of an impact in PSD,” said Vicki Thompson, the public school district’s executive director of Human Resources. Not including substitute teachers, PSD employs about 3,600 employees.

Newly hired into her position Thompson hasn’t yet observed PSD’s negotiations process, which takes place each Spring. Drawing on previous experience in nearby Thompson School District, however, she knows collective bargaining can at times “be pretty emotional.”

Before TSD two years ago made its process public, Thompson said the closed-door process occasionally offered a forum in which to address these tensions. Never during closed negotiations, though, did anything happen she wouldn’t want members of the public to know.

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