A state hearing officer is weighing arguments in a dispute between the Lawrence school board and the district’s teachers union about workload assignments for high school English faculty.

Both sides of the conflict now are awaiting the decision of the Kansas Department of Human Resources hearing officer. A ruling is expected in October, but either side could file a lawsuit challenging that outcome.

“I definitely feel we have a case,” Wayne Kruse, president of Lawrence Education Assn., said Thursday.

School board member Cindy Yulich, who attended a recent state hearing on the clash, believes otherwise.

“It was clear to me the procedures and policies we have in place are very, very good,” she said.

With legal assistance from Kansas-National Education Assn., the executive council of LEA challenged the school board’s decision to eliminate one of the two 50-minute planning periods English instructors at the high schools have had since the 1970s.

English teachers were assigned four classes and two planning periods because they were thought to need extra time to grade students’ written work. All other teachers had five classes and one planning period.

In a budget-cutting move before start of the 2002-2003 school year, the school board required the 30 English teachers at Lawrence High School and Free State High School to give up the second planning period and teach one more class.

Adding to the workload of those teachers saved the district $100,000 in labor costs, said Mary Rodriguez, the district’s executive director of human resources.

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She said the supplemental planning period was never part of the official contract signed by the district’s 900 teachers and could be eliminated unilaterally by the board.

“The issue is: Can the board require high school English teachers to teach five of six classes as provided in the master agreement?” she said.

LEA challenged the board’s action by submitting a complaint to the state in November 2002. LEA alleges the district engaged in an unfair labor practice by not negotiating with the union regarding elimination of the second planning period.

“This issue should have been brought to the table,” Kruse said.

The complaint seeks restoration of the second planning period and payment of restitution to faculty who taught the extra course last year.

Arbitration earlier this year failed to resolve the dispute, which led to the hearing at the Kansas Department of Human Resources.

Both sides maintain their positions are anchored by a desire to maintain a soundness in the negotiating process.

“The district really wants to protect the integrity of the master agreement,” Rodriguez said.

Kruse agreed, adding years of past practice had the same force as written passages in a negotiated contract.

“The bottom line is trying to protect bargaining,” he said.