A longtime advocate and voice for Fort Wayne Community Schools teachers, Steve Brace, has been laid off from his job as executive director of the union.

Brace, 62, is among “three or four dozen” employees of the Indiana State Teachers Association who were cut as a result of a financial crisis that led to an investigation of the organization’s insurance trust, said Dan Clark, ISTA deputy executive director.

ISTA and the National Education Association, which was brought in to clean up the problem, are trying to find enough money to pay people receiving long-term disability benefits from the insurance trust.

Brace has been the executive director, also known as the UniServ director, of the Fort Wayne Education Association for two years, was the president of the teachers union for 10 years and has spent 39 years with FWCS.

Because he has only been a UniServ director for two years, Brace’s experience worked against him and he was bumped when layoffs came down.

“It’s like losing a family member,” Superintendent Wendy Robinson said. “In my role as deputy (superintendent) and my role as superintendent, I have come to depend on Steve and his understanding of the relationship … between the success of boys and girls and quality teachers. He was as much an advocate for kids as he was for teachers.”

The Fort Wayne Education Association will have a new UniServ director Aug. 17 – Casey Patterson, who previously served as the director of the Indianapolis Education Association.

Two UniServ assistants who work for the Fort Wayne Education Association were also laid off. Brace and the assistants are paid by ISTA, but the union president, Al Jacquay, is paid by the Fort Wayne Education Association.

The executive director is responsible for handling teachers’ grievances and arbitrations and also deals with most personnel and building issues.

Jacquay is responsible for the governance of the union, teacher membership and helps the director work with principals to resolve differences.

Jacquay and the local union have complained to the ISTA about Brace’s layoff, and they say the union is violating a contract that states the local officials can have a say in who is named the executive director. Jacquay said they have met with an attorney and hope to sit at the table with ISTA officials and discuss the situation to avoid legal proceedings.

After Jacquay heard that Brace might be laid off, he was concerned the replacement would be someone not experienced in urban issues. Jacquay said he’s glad Patterson is coming from Indianapolis Public Schools but isn’t sure whether her one year as UniServ director is enough to consider her highly qualified.

“Both Steve Brace and Casey Patterson are of the highest caliber employees the ISTA has,” Clark said.

ISTA is also closing two area education union offices and forcing them to move into the Fort Wayne Education Association offices. Brace was given the option of being the director who oversees the unions for East Allen County Schools, Northwest Allen County Schools and Southwest Allen County Schools, among other areas.

But Brace turned it down because he believed it would be awkward to work in the same office as the new executive director of the Fort Wayne Education Association.

“Given the dynamics of the office reorganization, I didn’t think it would be in the best interest of everyone for me to take that position,” Brace said.

Brace has been instrumental in forging a positive relationship with FWCS administrators and the board, Robinson said, and his leadership led to the district’s winning an award for the cooperation between the two units. Brace is proud of the last contract he negotiated for FWCS teachers, which gave them one of the highest pay increases in the state.

“I think that the relationship that we have with FWCS is topnotch, and it has enabled us to do a lot of problem-solving, resolve a lot of issues without litigation,” Brace said.

“I think there’s been a real effort on both the part of myself and Dr. Robinson to make sure that FWCS keeps moving in the right direction.”

Brace had planned to spend the next four years as a UniServ director but now isn’t sure what he’ll do. He could attempt to return to teaching but said, ironically, that because of the contract language that he wrote, the FWCS teachers who have been laid off would have to be placed in jobs before he could secure a position.

“There’s just a lot of things going on that I’m really going to miss being a part of,” Brace said. “From a professional and personal point of view, that’s unsettling.”

ksoderlund@jg.net