The what and why of ‘meet and confer’ in North Carolina school districts

“We are the union! The mighty, mighty union!” members of the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) chanted at meetings in school districts across North Carolina.

The word choice — union instead of association — is intentional and represents an organizational shift. Though NCAE is classified as a 501(c)(6), a nonprofit designation for professional organizations, it has embraced union language. In a 2023 address, NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly declared the year’s theme to be the “Power of our Union and the Promise of Public Schools.”

“Let’s think about that for just a moment. Power and progress. Union and public education,” she said. “It wasn’t all that long ago a president standing here would not be putting these words together.”

In early 2024, NCAE released a strategic plan whose first priority is “Grow Our Union.” The organization’s goal is to have 30,000 members by 2030. A state auditor report put NCAE’s membership at 25,679 at the end of 2023.

At around the same time, movements for educators to have formal input in school district policy kicked off in Durham and Asheville. This spring, the two local NCAE affiliates in those places became the first in North Carolina to see “meet and confer” processes, which will facilitate meetings between educators and administration, codified in their districts.

Their journeys weren’t straightforward. In the case of Asheville City Schools (ACS), the campaign for meet and confer was stymied by the caution that comes with breaking new ground — and interrupted by Hurricane Helene.

And in Durham, contentious meetings between Durham Public Schools (DPS) administrators and association organizers took place against a backdrop of “sickouts” that, on one day, forced a dozen schools to close in early 2024, and led to multiple missed school days for students across the district.

In both districts, educators were ultimately able to leverage windows of opportunity created by these events. But in doing so, there was another obstacle to navigate. Under North Carolina law, public sector employees are barred from entering into collective bargaining agreements.

Collective bargaining and the path to ‘meet and confer’

In 1958, city officials in Charlotte were worried at the prospect of police and firefighter unions becoming nationally organized. The city attorney was asked to “bring in legislation that will protect the City from things like that which is happening in New York.”

The following year, a bill sponsored by a state representative from Mecklenburg County became law. Ever since, North Carolina public sector employees have been banned from collectively bargaining. Any contract or agreement between a municipality and a labor organization is “illegal, unlawful, void and of no effect,” the law says.

The collective bargaining ban is one of many anti-union policies — the state’s “at will” employment, its “right to work” status, and a ban on public sector strikes — that add up to make present-day North Carolina largely devoid of organized labor. Last year just 2.4% of wage and salary workers were members of a union or employee association, the lowest rate in the country.

NCAE’s union is not without opposition. In 2021, the conservative John Locke Foundation launched a statewide campaign to encourage educators to leave NCAE, arguing, among other things, that NCAE “embraces a progressive, highly political agenda.”

However, associations like the Asheville City Association of Educators (ACAE) and Durham Association of Educators (DAE) represent large proportions of school workers and are harnessing their influence.

“Working in a state that doesn’t have collective bargaining means that we need to take more concerted efforts to make sure that our educators have formal places where their voices can be listened to and heard,” Walker Kelly told WUNC in early 2024.

“Meet and confer,” in the context of a school district, is a process through which the district solicits input on policy from an employee representative organization (ERO) — like ACAE and DAE — while not entering into a bargaining agreement. Until now it had never been implemented in North Carolina school districts.

Under meet and confer, association representatives will meet regularly with the superintendent’s appointees and, if there is agreement, make joint recommendations to the district board of education. The board still retains the authority to enact whatever policies it wishes.

Though while the board makes final decisions about school district budgets, boards of education in North Carolina do not have the power of the purse — which lies locally, with county commissions, in North Carolina — meaning school boards are limited in which requests they can implement without county or state funding.

There is a distinction between what is called the “Meet, Confer, Collaborate” procedure in Asheville and the meet and confer policy in Durham. The ACS procedure was enacted by ACS Superintendent Dr. Maggie Fehrman and could be revoked by her or by a future superintendent, Fehrman said. In Durham, the policy passed a DPS Board of Education vote and has the permanence of any other district policy.

Asheville’s ‘Meet, Confer, Collaborate’ procedure

In early 2024, two school closures were announced by ACS. The community was shocked that Lucy S. Herring Elementary School would be closed for a year for extensive renovations, just after the permanent closure of Montford North Star Academy.

Within a few days, the closure of Lucy S. Herring was backtracked. That week, ACAE had circulated a petition opposing the closure and seeking a formal voice within the district. The petition quickly accumulated the signatures of over half of ACS workers, organizers said.

“For a good number of years, there had been a growing distrust of our school board and central office,” said former ACAE President Timothy Lloyd. “There was the belief among staff and parents that no one was consulted about any of this.”

Over the course of the next year, ACAE and the ACS Board of Education went back and forth on what that formal voice might look like. Drawing inspiration from parallel efforts in Durham, they discussed the prospect of a meet and confer policy. According to Lloyd, board lawyers believed such a policy might be legally muddy given the state ban on collective bargaining.

“Heavily disagree with that,” Lloyd said.

After months without coming to an arrangement, the superintendent proposed the idea of a procedure, which didn’t require board approval.

“I think one of the biggest areas of compromise was making it a procedure instead of a policy,” said Fehrman. “Anytime you reach out and you break a barrier, there’s always going to be some hesitancy and wonder.”

But according to both Lloyd and Fehrman, the process was nonetheless amicable and collaborative — hence the addition of the word in the final “Meet, Confer, Collaborate” procedure, adopted in April of this year.

The procedure lays out parameters for eight meetings from September to June of a committee comprising five to seven employee representatives of an ERO with at least 50% membership, and an equal number of administration representatives appointed by the superintendent. ACAE is expected to be the ERO.

Durham association wins policy after contentious back-and-forth

The DPS policy is still being refined, but a version is already on the books. Whereas Asheville’s procedure all but designates ACAE as the ERO that will participate through its 50% membership requirement, Durham’s policy leaves the door open for other EROs to join the meet and confer committee.

DAE, which is expected to be certified by a third party to represent over 50% of non-administrative active employees, will be granted up to 13 committee seats. Additional seats will potentially be granted to other EROs with as little as 11% representation.

That figure — the 11% — is one crux of the policy. Because North Carolina law bans preferential treatment of EROs, some worry that a higher representation requirement could be legally contested. At a May Board of Education meeting, Rod Malone, an attorney for the Board, was non-committal about the legality.

“There is no real answer we have from anybody, any case law on this statute,” he said. “Obviously, the lower the percentage, we believe, makes it more defensible.”

Then again, the lower the percentage, the more likely it is that small groups divide the voice of workers. Before the percentage became 11, it was six, which drew pushback from DAE members.

“Six percent is about 200 workers. I wouldn’t be convinced that 200 out of 5,200 staff is capable of representing a diverse group,” said DAE President Mika Twietmeyer.

The journey was long to arrive at that specific argument. For over a year, DAE representatives and district administration negotiated at ad-hoc meetings, board meetings, and behind closed doors. On multiple occasions, DAE members walked out of meetings; Natalie Beyer, a district board member, said, “This has been the most divisive issue for our community.”

The policymaking took place in the shadow of “sickouts” in early 2024, when school staff coordinated to take sick days in protest following a district accounting error that initially led it to revoke raises that had already been granted to employees. Many schools were forced to close on multiple days. The sickouts, which Twietmeyer called illegal, possibly violated the state law against public sector strikes.

Dr. Anthony Lewis became the superintendent of DPS after the sickouts, as the movement for a meet and confer policy was underway. He’d previously worked in districts in Kansas and Missouri where public sector collective bargaining was legal, and said past agreements with unions shaped how he approached DAE’s request for meet and confer.

“Some districts will, you know, performatively listen, and then they check a box and continue on about their daily business. And that’s not how I want to operate,” Lewis said. Through the meet and confer policy, he said he hopes to preempt the necessity of something like a sickout in the future.

A nascent movement in Edgecombe

The local affiliate in Edgecombe County is a poster child for the kind of growth NCAE’s strategic plan says it hopes for across the state. With NCAE guidance and support, membership has surged, increasing six-fold in the past three years to more than 500 members, according to Edgecombe County Association of Educators (ECAE) President Marcia Moyd-Williams.

All three associations — in Durham, Asheville, and Edgecombe — now represent over half of their respective districts’ workers.

The rising membership, organizers said, comes with a shift in attitude towards the function of an educators’ association. In the past, it was regarded as a support in individual disputes with school administration; now, it’s becoming a collective voice to advocate for the priorities of schools workers. A voice, organizers said, that increasingly includes classified staff — bus drivers, office staff, food service workers, and other non-teaching personnel. (Lloyd, the former ACAE president, is a custodian at Asheville Middle School; a critical budget priority for DAE this cycle was funding for school bus monitor salary supplements.)

Why now?

Top-down growth strategies driven by NCAE (and the National Education Association, of which NCAE is a state affiliate) could be one explanation for the emergence of meet and confer. NCAE organizers and lawyers aided local affiliates in recruiting members and drafting policy language; NEA and NCAE grants supplemented union dues to help fund DAE operations, Twietmeyer said.

But there is also what organizers say is a renewed energy in school hallways and in after-school community meetings. Brandy Chappell, an AIG specialist and long-time ECAE member, has a unique view of organizing efforts: she rotates through five schools as part of her work. She’s seen the rise of chatter and the proliferation of red T-shirts signifying union support. At first, prospective members are concerned with the cost — Chappell said her dues are about $60 per month — but “people really latch onto the idea of teachers having a voice with the school board,” she said.

While a 2024 Department of Public Instruction survey found that, statewide, 91% of educators agreed or strongly agreed that “overall, my school is a good place to work and learn” — and that rate held true in Durham Public Schools and Asheville City Schools — survey results also indicated a need for more differentiated professional development, more non-instructional time for educators, and improved facilities and resources. And according to NCAE, educators face other challenges that make staying in the profession difficult.

“(C)hronic underfunding, disrespect of education professionals, and prioritizing private school vouchers are leading North Carolina’s schools to fall behind,” says NCAE’s website. “We are losing educators in record numbers, and our kids are feeling the impact.”

As state policy consistently falls short of NCAE’s wishes — including for higher wages, testing standards for private schools receiving vouchers, and public schools funded in according with Leandro — many educators are looking to speak and be heard.

While association members would love a repeal of the ban on collective bargaining, it is generally agreed such a repeal is not politically possible right now given the makeup of the state legislature.

For educators in Asheville, Durham, and Edgecombe who nevertheless want a louder voice, meet and confer could grant it.