Jeffrey Sultanik, Fox Rothschild.

Jeffrey Sultanik, Fox Rothschild

When the Pennsylvania Senate's Education Committee needed advice in April 2018 on fixing Act 88—the state's teacher contract negotiating law—it called Sultanik, chair of the education law group at Fox Rothschild.

In 2018 alone, he managed to resolve at least five difficult teacher contract disputes, achieving results that protected taxpayers and the quality of education in the Great Valley, Upper Moreland, Jenkintown, Stroudsburg and Methacton school districts. The Great Valley and Upper Moreland disputes were solved via fact-finding, avoiding strikes, while Jenkintown's and Stroudsburg's negotiations was settled via mediator's proposals. In Methacton, after teachers walked out, the dispute was ended using voluntary, nonbinding arbitration, a unique path to a settlement. These high-stakes negotiations are complex and highly charged, conducted in the public eye with children's futures and residents' pocketbooks hanging in the balance. School districts find their options limited, constrained by limits on tax revenue and the need to keep students learning at a high level. In these situations, Sultanik is viewed as the innovative thinker utilizing sophisticated financial forecasting models that school employers want at the helm.

He is also supervising the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District's ongoing defense of a federal civil rights lawsuit involving fair share payroll deductions that was filed just days after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision this summer in Janus v. AFSCME. In the case, one of the first tests of Janus, a bus driver sued the district and the Teamsters Union in federal court after the union refused accept his resignation on the basis of the contract's and state's maintenance of membership requirements.

How did you develop your practice?

I got my start when my predecessor firm was looking for a labor attorney to handle contract negotiations for our existing education clientele in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The position interested me, so I tagged along with my mentor, Philip Salkin, attending meetings and bargaining sessions, and eventually inherited a number of core school district clients. From that base, I grew my practice through referrals, extensive speaking engagements and organizational participation. It is a very networked industry, and I have regularly engaged with the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO), the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA), the Council of School Attorneys (CSA), the Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS), the Pennsylvania Association of School Personnel Administrators (PASPA) and other similar industry groups. In the first third of this year alone, I scheduled seven speaking engagements before a variety of groups including PSBA, PASA and PASBO on wide range of topics, from cyberbullying to contract negotiating trends.

Whether you're negotiating a teacher contract dispute or advising a school district on the implementation of a controversial policy, you're often called upon to be the voice of reason on highly charged, high-profile matters that ultimately affect the welfare of children. What's the key to blocking out the noise and remaining level-headed in those situations?

Having attended more than 9,000 school board meetings in my career, I believe my strength in dealing with controversial policies or intense negotiations derives from having a thorough understanding of each school district's demographics and client needs. I start by reviewing the offering statement of a school district's most recent bond issue, which details the demographics and taxing powers of the school district. Trying to understand the cultural, demographic and political forces on each school board is also critical to understanding how to fulfill client objectives. That said, asking many questions and not getting overly excited in handling a particular issue is the key to making cerebral and well thought-out recommendations and proposals on behalf of a client. Simply put, the key to blocking out the “noise” is to ultimately understand the client's objectives and work toward an acceptable “end game.”

What is the best advice you ever received?

My mentor once told me that I should be prepared, on more than one occasion, to respond to a situation in which a school board or board member would do something unpredictable, and I would need to distance myself from it and disengage. That advice was tested a few decades ago when I attended a televised school board meeting. At the time, districts were required to approve all textbooks at a publicly advertised school board meeting. When textbook adoption came up, the board president aggressively questioned the superintendent as to why the school district was teaching about dinosaurs in junior high.

The superintendent read through the long list of textbooks a number of times and eventually stated that he did not see anything on the list that would lead him to believe the subject of dinosaurs was being taught in junior high.

The board president responded that it most certainly was on the list. “Don't you see the words 'The Saurus',” he said.

The large audience, which had filled the auditorium over an unrelated controversy, started to laugh hysterically and even some of the administrators on the dais burst out in laughter, in full view of the television cameras.

It was then I recalled my mentor's advice, and attempted to look at the corner of the room, envisioning myself sunbathing on a beach in the Caribbean to avoid laughing at the board president, who was ultimately responsible for paying the fees and services for our firm.