Opinion ID: 2288016
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Class Size

Text: By such general approach to the application of the working conditions  educational policies dichotomy, and as an initial illustration of the techinque in operation, I conclude that the concrete item of class size lies within educational policies  excluded from collective bargaining and binding arbitration. Although the size of a class to be taught by a given teacher plainly and seriously affects teacher working conditions, the impacts of class size overlap into a number of managerial and policy areas which are of substantial qualitative importance. Class size requirements directly involve considerations not merely of organization, supervision, direction and distribution of personnel but also of the needs for additional school building construction or other types of capital outlays, the current population trends, the appropriate use of technological developments (such as television or other electronic teaching aids) and the swings in educational philosophies and theories and the manner of their implementation. Here, then, (1) working conditions features are so intimately entwined with an abundant plurality of important managerial and pure policy elements that class size must be deemed to be an integral complex of educational policies and working conditions  incapable of separation to allow the working conditions factors to be negotiated in isolation and (2) with class size thus treated as an inseparable unit, it cannot, as a unit, qualify for collective bargaining and binding arbitration because the weight of the educational policies factors contained in it are sufficiently heavy to override the impacts upon the working conditions of teachers. The arbitrators exceeded their jurisdiction in making binding determinations as to class size.