Oral arguments, HILIA & more
Update on our case before the Appellate Court
Oral arguments are scheduled for August 26 in Springfield
As you know, after we prevailed in our petition before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB) to establish the Lab School Education Association at Illinois State University, ISU continued their challenge of the makeup of our bargaining unit all the way to the Illinois Appellate Court, Fourth District.
Their primary argument is that they don’t believe HILIA employees should be included in our bargaining unit. They appear to have dropped their other previous arguments about some other positions they had argued should not be included.
After several delays and extensions, all paperwork has been filed and the Appellate Court has scheduled our case. If you are interested, you can read ISU’s initial brief in the Appellate Court case, our response brief, the Illinois Attorney General’s brief on behalf of the labor board, the ISU’s closing reply brief. Those are the documents before the court. Oral arguments are scheduled August 26, with a decision to come from the Court after.
As a reminder, both the labor board and union are parties to the litigation. The labor board is represented by the Illinois AG’s office. We continue to be represented by IEA’s fantastic legal counsel, Sam Hensel who is supported by the IEA Legal Department. ISU hired outside counsel — at a significant cost — to handle the case.
HILIA updates
We also want to provide a brief updated related to HILIA and try to address whatever questions we can.
HILIA (the Heart of Illinois Low Incidence Association) exists in collaboration between Bloomington District 87, Livingston County Special Services Unit, Tri-County Special Education Association, McLean County Unit 5 School District, Illinois State University Laboratory Schools, and the Regional Office of Education. And HILIA operated under a Memorandum of Understanding with ISU. One stipulation of that agreement if that each party to it must provide one years’ notice should they look to terminate the MOU. The expiration of the current MOU is June 30, 2027. The HILIA board and ISU have been working to revise the MOU to begin the 2027 school year. At this point, that has not been completed and to preserve their options, the HILIA board has given one years’ notice to terminate their MOU with ISU.
It is our understanding both parties are still interested in working together to revise the MOU and come to agreement over the coming months. But we also understand the HILIA board is exploring what other options they may have with other school districts in the region.
What we don’t know is exactly what impact, if any, this will have on HILIA folks who are currently represented by LSEA (and we hope will continue to be represented by LSEA pending the Appellate Court’s upcoming decision).
Assuming the Court finds in our favor and LSEA continues to represent these HILIA employees, we will continue bargaining and anticipate having a contract in place well before the existing MOU between HILIA and ISU would expire or be replaced. At that point, if the HILIA Board and ISU did not extend their agreement, a number of things could occur.
If the HILIA Board partners with a different entity, ISU will have to bargain with LSEA over the effects of ISU laying off the HILIA staff.
If the HILIA Board contracts with a different employer (like another school district) instead of ISU, that/those employer(s) will have to bargain with LSEA if they hire a majority of the HILIA employees, which they most certainly would.
This obviously does not happen often, but there are some existing labor board decisions that discuss the law with respect to successor employers in the public sector and we would rely on those as we responded if such a change were to occur.
Without knowing what will occur, what other entity HILIA might partner with, and what their agreement would look like, there are too many hypothetical possibilities to say for sure what would happen and how things would turn out.
In the meantime, we are working with our attorneys to determine some potential steps we could take and we will continue to as we learn more.
Most importantly, none of this impacts ISU’s current obligation to bargain with the union. They can’t avoid bargaining as a result of their decision to appeal to the courts. We are moving ahead as planned. We’ll be putting together our bargaining team, preparing to go to the bargaining table, filing our demand to bargain with ISU and heading to the bargaining table to negotiate our first contract!
Leave a Reply