Dane Gibson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 02/00) - Some public school teachers in Yellowknife will be getting back money they say was wrongfully taken off their paycheques by Yellowknife Education District No. 1.

After a year-long dispute, the NWT Teachers Association (NWTTA) negotiated a settlement with the district on Monday.

The dispute between the school board - then under the leadership of Ken Woodley - and the NWTTA started when the board deducted vacation travel assistance and other payments from the teachers' cheques Jan. 15, 1999 without NWTTA's consent.

The board recovered the money because it felt the money was owed retroactively to Sept. 1997, which was the termination date of the previous contract.

The NWTTA argued that because the old contract was still in effect at the time (a new collective agreement had yet to be ratified), the board could not arbitrarily take money without going through the union.

"All monies collected will be refunded without interest and the board has agreed to forgive any overpayments," said Pat Thomas, NWTTA president following Monday's negotiations.

Dan Schofield, chairman of the district school board, said the former board moved on the advice of its legal counsel at the time.

"The issue was about clarity within the contract and communications on how the contract was implemented," said Schofield.

"The only fault lies with the lack of communication between the two parties. If people took the time to sit and talk things out to the fullest, issues like this wouldn't occur."

As a member of the bargaining team representing the board, Interim Superintendent Judith Knapp said she took a long look at the history of the dispute before agreeing to the repayment.

"We did quite a bit of research on how the new contract was to apply. We needed to look at all the clauses (in the collective agreement) together to determine how they fit together and what was allowable," said Knapp.

"With the signing of this agreement, the issue is finally 100 per cent settled so I'm very pleased. I think we have a lot of work to do and we need our team together."

Neither party would disclose further details of the settlement, including the amount of money Yellowknife teachers would be receiving back.

Currently, there are about 200 teachers working for the district.