BURLINGTON – Fran Brock, a Burlington High School history teacher who serves as the president of the Burlington Education Association, issued the following statement responding to the school board’s invitation to resume contract talks:

“We are pleased that the board indicated a willingness to resume talks with Burlington’s teachers. But it is quite unfortunate that they put conditions on those talks. A negotiation with conditions is not a true negotiation. To be clear, when the board unilaterally decided to end talks and impose an employment policy on the city’s teachers, they did so knowing that we were willing to accept the recommendations of a neutral fact-finder.

“If the board’s invitation to resume talks is sincere – and that means removing the imposition and entering into meaningful talks with us – we welcome the chance to sit down. But if the board’s chairman puts preconditions on the invitation to talk, we can only conclude that this is more about optics and bargaining by press release than on truly reaching a negotiated contract settlement.”