Recent Teacher Policy Changes in Tennessee: From Collective Bargaining to Collaborative Conferencing
March 2012
Author: Linda Wesson
The method for local school boards and teachers in Tennessee to establish agreements on conditions of employment underwent a major change in 2011. The Education Professional Negotiations Act (Public Acts 1978, Chapter 570), which allowed teachers to join and be exclusively represented by an employees’ organization in contract negotiations with school boards, was repealed. The new Professional Educators Collaborative Conferencing Act (Public Acts 2011, Chapter 378) replaced it. The new collaborative conferencing law changed the employment relationship between school boards and teachers in several key ways. Collective bargaining and collaborative conferencing are methods for governing the relationship between local boards of education and their professional employees, as well as any organizations representing those employees. This brief compares the 2011 law to the previous one.