We are skilled and experienced with teacher negotiations and administrator contracts, and genuinely love our work on school district and higher education employment contracts. Few areas of the law are more important to our clients because the work we do on educator employment contracts is directly related to our clients’ and its administrative team’s success.
We regularly advise school district clients on the appropriate content for teacher negotiations and contracts, as well as on matters that have to be included in those contracts if the district wants to make certain that they can be enforced. We also draft teacher contract language and have developed any number of model contract provisions to consider as part of developing an effective, comprehensive contract of employment. In addition, our attorneys have decades of experience handling teacher contract nonrenewal, teacher private conferences, and challenges to nonrenewal decisions, and are equally experienced with employee layoffs and other non-disciplinary means of ending the employment relationship.
Firm attorneys are equally proficient with school and higher education executive and administrator contracts. We provide guidance on developing those administrator contracts, whether it involves more standard provisions or requires formulating contract language that is unique to the situation presented. One of our primary goals—and among the most critical--is ensuring that the contract provides clear meaning and unambiguous direction. Clients often seek our counsel on administrative restructuring and organization of school district management, and this often requires systemic revisions to administrative positions and corresponding administrator employment contracts. We also support education clients in administrator severance matters, including retirement and retirement benefits, as well as discharge and nonrenewal.
We approach this subject with the care and discipline that it deserves. We are school and higher education attorneys, and support the tremendous work that school boards and education professionals do for our children, our communities, and the great state of Wisconsin. That means that we can’t just be well-schooled attorneys. We have to get it.
And we do. When a teacher or administrator’s job is at stake, we do our jobs well and according to the rule of law. But we also take great care with our client’s employees, professional relationships, and public image. Our attorneys understand the importance of demonstrating respect for all concerned, and how essential it is that we reflect the values and temperament of the dedicated public servants that we represent. We win gracefully.
Second, we understand the public context in which school and technical college boards make difficult decisions. The school and technical college boards that we work with are themselves public servants. Accordingly, we have to vindicate the public’s confidence and trust in our educational institutions’ leadership. We bring essential sophistication to the administrator contract and teacher negotiations process on behalf of our clients: our team’s poise, sensitivity, and public acumen has benefited our clients immeasurably and is central to the pride we take in helping clients to not just win, but to be successful with our clients’ constituencies.