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Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA president, Kevin Moretti, and I have been meeting weekly with the District since the middle of May. Our meetings have also been in consultation with the rest of the CUTA bargaining team and E-Board. We are trying to stay on top of the rapidly changing situation as it relates to bargaining issues surrounding reopening school in August. Because things are changing so quickly, this update may feel vague, but at the very least CUTA wanted you to know that we are continuing our close relationship with the District through the summer months. First and foremost, the District is committed to following any and all health and safety requirements from Butte County and from the state. Currently, many of the suggestions from the state for reopening schools safely have been just that: suggestions, or they have been so qualified as to be almost meaningless as directives. The state guidelines are riddled with phrases like as practical or if possible. This is the result of being part of a huge state that is experiencing the pandemic at very different levels in very different places. Governor Newsom’s recent directive to wear masks statewide in public spaces is one of the strongest directives I’ve seen so far, but even it doesn’t mention yet how it will be enforced in local communities. Many of you know that the District sent surveys to parents and CUTA members to gauge interest in various instructional models for reopening school. The District plans to send surveys out again since they recognize people’s opinions and thoughts may change as the overall situation develops in Butte County. Please check your email so that you can share your most up to date thoughts about reopening. Speaking very generally, the surveys indicated that a large majority of parents and teachers wanted to return to traditional school or some hybrid version of traditional school in August, and that a minority, though still substantial number, of parents and teachers were not comfortable returning to school sites in the fall. Even this is not without caveats. Some parents and teachers likely believed that traditional school, as referred to in the survey, would include social distancing, temperature checks, masks, or some combination of these and other protections. The reality of instituting these kinds of protections is unknown, and they are not currently required by the county, though that, like everything else, may change. This is all to say that we are working with so many unknowns. When you couple this with potentially substantial budget cuts to education, you can imagine how challenging it is to plan anything. Still, the District is making a valiant effort to get prepared for all eventualities. There are large teams of teachers and administrators working on possible elementary and secondary schedules. Currently, the District plans to expand its online teaching program for students whose parents are planning to not send their children to school sites. There are online curricula for both elementary and secondary students, and the District believes that they can train teachers to use them in one or two short training sessions, which they plan to offer later this summer. One option being explored is to enroll students of concerned parents in online learning and selecting and training teachers who are concerned about returning in the use of these curricula. CUTA and the District have agreed in principle that teachers who attend one of these training sessions would be excused from one of the “teacher-choice” district wide staff development days during the school year or be paid $100. (The District may also offer voluntary training sessions for distance learning in the event that we have to close school sites again at some point during the year; these sessions would be compensated in the same manner as above.) Matching students who won’t return with teachers who don’t want to return in an online teaching program presents a problem. What if there are more teachers interested in this online teaching option than students to fill the spots? CUTA shared an agreement reached in San Juan that established how to select teachers in this scenario, and, although we haven’t reached an official agreement, the District felt the model was likely to work in Chico Unified. In this model, the District would establish pools of interested teachers for elementary and for secondary. These pools would be chosen from in the following order of priority:
There are multiple potential problems with this scenario on which we are still working. For example, what if the school year started smoothly in the traditional setting and large numbers of students exited the online teaching and returned to the traditional classroom? What happens to all of those teachers? Additionally, imagine this model lasted for one year, and everyone was returning to the traditional setting for the 2021-2022 school year. Although I believe the District would make the best effort possible to return members to their original site and teaching assignment, pre-Covid-19, CUSD would never be able to guarantee this. Members opting for the online teaching model would have to realize that due to unforeseen circumstances, including declining enrollment, they could end up in a different assignment on a different site upon return to traditional teaching. In addition to this model, which likely only applies to approximately 10% of students and members as of current survey data, we have to figure out what school will look like for the other 90% of students and members. We have a lot of work to do and a constantly changing situation to contend with. In the end, much will be dictated by the directives received from the county and state. As for possible state budget cuts to education, the District is working up multiple scenarios to reflect the various possible state budgets, including major cuts, no cuts, mid-year cuts, etc. If you ever wondered what the District did during the summer months, rest assured they are working extremely hard to try to protect Chico Unified, its students, and its employees. This is an unprecedented situation we find ourselves in, and we will all have to take a lot of deep breaths this summer and wait for more information as it develops. Try to relax and enjoy your summer holiday as best you can. CUTA will keep you informed of significant developments during the summer. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chiar Chico Unified Teachers Association
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Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Wednesday, February 26. We continued our negotiations about special education, innovative scheduling at the high school, and compensation, and we discussed confusing contract language about the student-to-counselor ratio. Special Education We continued to work on establishing the parameters of the blended model of RSP students and mild/mod SDC students at the secondary level. In this model, mild/mod SDC secondary teachers could volunteer to become RSP teachers. Additionally, the District will no longer identify students as RSP or mild/mod SDC when they enter secondary; all students will be identified as mild/mod students. CUTA believes teachers should have a full understanding of what the new model will look like so that teachers interested in volunteering can make an informed decision. We moved closer to a full understanding this week. RSP teachers, both existing and new volunteers, would teach four classes and have a prep period and a case management period. CUTA and the District are moving towards an agreement on a total student contact number in a day, rather than a maximum class size. This is in part to allow teachers to volunteer to teach five classes instead of four to lower their class sizes throughout the day. The District is also wary of setting a maximum class size too low for a brand new program, although they have expressed concern with any class sizes above the low twenties for this program, and they expect most class sizes to be much smaller. The main development this week is that the District is willing to proceed using a memorandum of understanding (MOU) instead of contract language. Since an MOU is not permanent contract language, current SDC teachers could volunteer to try the new position next year, and if the program did not meet their expectations or other aspects of the program were renegotiated in the final contract language, they could return to their SDC position. Because of the unknown movement of students in a new program like this, it is impossible to guarantee that a teacher choosing to return to SDC would remain at their same site. In addition, the District has not settled on a final date for SDC teachers to volunteer to make the change, but they plan to push it back as far as possible. E-Board would need to approve the MOU we develop, and teachers will still need to see the final details before deciding. Innovative Scheduling at the High Schools At our last negotiations session, the District brought the best offer they felt they could afford for the maximum student contact number. CUTA shared that number with members--204--and many people shared their frustration because they felt it would be impossible to convince two thirds of their colleagues to vote for innovative scheduling with that high of a student contact number. After further discussion, it appears that CUTA and the District weren’t communicating clearly with each other. The District felt pressured by CUTA to provide a final offer on innovative scheduling. That was not CUTA’s intent. The procedures we developed to govern this process don’t have specific dates or deadlines. More meetings are scheduled to continue the innovative scheduling discussion. We will not be rushing to hold the vote at the sites yet. We will share information as it becomes available. One new piece of information: The District has agreed that RSP teachers in a block schedule would teach five classes, two preps (like all other teachers), and a case management period. CUTA thanks the District for their willingness to listen to special education teachers' concerns. Compensation CUTA and the District continue to share an interest in the stability gained by a three-year wage agreement. However, according to the District, the raises over the last three years, the state-mandated increases to the District’s STRS contributions, and increasing program costs, including special education, have pushed the District into a deficit. With many unknowns about the state’s budget this year, including a potentially positive change in the way special education will be funded, the District is hesitant to reach a long-term wage agreement at this time. Because of the District’s transparent and honest communication in negotiations, CUTA is willing to keep working on a wage agreement--for next year and the out years--into the fall so that the District can experience greater certainty about the impact of the state budget. CUTA recognizes the District must remain financially secure by addressing deficits in their budget, and one option that we shared for a three-year compensation agreement involved splitting the new money from the state as part ongoing compensation and part one-time money. CUTA would like to continue using the per-ADA percentage increase to identify compensation increases. For example, in this option, if the per-ADA percentage increase were to be 3% for next year, CUTA would receive 1.5% as an ongoing compensation increase, and CUTA would also receive 1.5% in one-time compensation. This allows the District to use their healthy reserves to cover the one-time money, and they would be able to use their half of the ongoing increases to address their deficit over the life of the wage agreement. The District expressed cautious interest in this idea. We will continue our discussions. Student-to-Counselor Ratio Lastly, we examined confusing contract language that is meant to describe the caseload for secondary counselors and how and when the District is obligated to add additional counselor support. Both CUTA and the District agreed that the current contract language is confusing, but more importantly it doesn’t match current practice. We will try to write new language that correctly describes the current practice. If you’d like to see the current version of our contract, here is the link. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Thursday, February 13. We continued our negotiations revolving around special education, innovative scheduling at the high school, and compensation. Special Education The District held a voluntary informational meeting about the plan to merge mild/moderate SDC students and RSP students at the secondary level with secondary mild/mod SDC teachers being given the option to become RSP teachers. The District responded to many questions from our members, and the discussion at the meeting informed our negotiations at this session. The District agreed in principle to putting the “teach four” schedule into the contract, in which an RSP teacher in the blended model would teach four classes and have one prep period and one case management period. This is current practice at the high schools in the RSP program, but it is not consistently practiced at the middle school level. CUTA would like to see a maximum class size for RSP classes in the planned blended program, but the District is concerned about potential “bubbles” in the program. Without abandoning this initial request for a maximum class size, CUTA proposed a maximum daily student contact so that any one teacher would not be faced with multiple oversized classes. CUTA also proposed a lower caseload of 26, in part to recognize that all parties involved agreed that the case management for mild/mod SDC students is, in general, more challenging. Although the District did not find this proposal appealing, they agreed to consider the possibility of setting a caseload max of 26 with the option to place a certain annual percentage of teachers at 28 to allow for natural fluctuations in student populations. This will be a difficult idea for the District to agree to. We also discussed how to write language that would guarantee no teachers would be laid off as the secondary programs were blended, and we agreed in theory that teachers who wanted to leave the blended program would have first rights to move to an open special education position in the District outside of this program. CUTA and the District are negotiating in good faith, and CUTA encourages its mild/mod SDC secondary teachers to wait until the particulars have been negotiated before volunteering. Innovative Scheduling The District came with the best offer they felt they could afford for the final negotiable items relating to innovative scheduling at the high schools. It is summarized in the table below. CUTA will now organize and run the vote at the high schools. This will be a private, “double envelope” vote, and secondary teachers may vote yes, no or abstain. Abstentions will not count in the final vote tally. Two-thirds of non-abstaining teachers must vote yes at each site individually to send the innovative scheduling on to E-Board for approval to add it to the next tentative agreement. Item Status Start time This will be dictated by the new law saying high school must start at 8:30 or later. If the new law does not go into effect, start times at both schools will likely not change. Prep time for general education A teacher will receive two preps during the eight period block; the preps will be on different days unless mutually agreed to by the member and the administrator. Prep time for special education Special education teachers will also receive two preps during the eight period block. Maximum class size 38: We will continue to follow the language in the secondary class size MOU. Total student contacts 204: This is an average class size of 34; teachers may volunteer to teach additional students (up to 210) and be paid $500 per added student per semester (as described in the secondary class size MOU. 6/5ths language If a teacher agreed to teach a seventh class because of site need, he or she would receive pay commensurate to 7/6ths of his or her salary. If a teacher agreed to teach a seventh and an eighth class, he or she would receive pay commensurate to 8/6ths of his or her salary. Teaching minutes in a day I believe the following is the latest schedule:
Collaboration The scheduling of collaboration time would be embedded in the contract language for the block schedule with the existing waiver language describing the purpose of collaboration time and the fact that it is teacher-driven. Transfer language If the block schedule becomes a reality, high school teachers at PV and Chico High would have first rights to transfer out of comprehensive high schools to other open positions that they are credentialed for and an interview process would govern decisions in the case of multiple candidates. Sunset clause Innovative scheduling would have a five year sunset clause, which means that after four years, it would automatically reopen for negotiations. CUTA or the District could choose to end innovative scheduling at that time, or they could negotiate for it to continue. Flexible implementation year If innovative scheduling was adopted, the District could delay implementation for one year (from 2021-22 to 2022-23) if required by budgetary constraints. Finals schedule The final schedule will be handled individually at each site, and there are enough minutes built into the proposed schedule to handle a finals schedule. Although portions of this may not be what was hoped for, CUTA recognizes the very real budget constraints and pressures felt by the District, including pressure from CUTA for compensation increases. CUTA recognizes the hard work of its members in developing this proposal and educating members for the last several years. Compensation CUTA and the District are going through the IBB process to develop as many possible options for compensation increases as possible. The projected ongoing dollars coming from the state for next year are not large, and CUTA recognizes the District’s need to address all three of their priorities: deficit reduction, compensation and programs. We believe there is a way forward to continue to address all three. We are negotiating while also waiting for more information about the state budget. If you’d like to see the current version of our contract, here is the link. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Thursday, January 16. We continued discussing special education, innovative scheduling at the high school, compensation and a host of other issues as well. Special Education We continued discussing the District’s plan to allow mild/moderate SDC secondary teachers to volunteer to become RSP teachers. In this plan, all of the mild/moderate SDC and RSP students would be blended into one group of students simply called mild/moderate students when they exit elementary school and enter middle school. Any mild/moderate SDC secondary teachers who wish to remain in their positions would be able to with no changes to their job. Those who volunteer to become RSP teachers would have a caseload of 28 students from the blended pool. Current RSP teachers could be impacted in terms of the classes they teach and the sizes of their classes. CUTA is negotiating specifics of the District’s plan, including maximum class sizes, potential changes to caseload maximums, and a guarantee of protection for teachers who don’t volunteer for the change. The District will continue to hold voluntary meetings for potentially impacted teachers, and these meetings have already generated excellent questions, which CUTA shared with the District yesterday The District has not shared a date when they would ask for teachers to make the decision to volunteer, because they recognize that more planning and information is needed. CUTA believes the specifics of the new model need to be negotiated before members should volunteer. We will continue negotiations in February. Innovative Scheduling at the High Schools We began to work on the negotiable issues related to the proposed block schedule at the high schools. Once the negotiated issues have been settled, the final plan will go back to the high schools for a vote to approve or not. If the final plan achieves a two-thirds approval vote at both high schools, the plan will go to E-Board for approval. If E-Board approves the plan, it will go into the next tentative agreement along with other negotiated items unrelated to innovative scheduling, which will be voted on by all members. Negotiable items discussed on Wednesday included (in no particular order): Item Status Start time This will be dictated by the new law saying high school must start at 8:30 or later. If the new law does not go into effect, start times at both schools will likely not change. Prep time for general education A teacher will receive two preps during the eight period block; the preps will be on different days unless mutually agreed to by the member and the administrator. Prep time for special education CUTA advocated for special education teachers to receive three non-teaching periods during the eight period block; negotiations are continuing. Maximum class size Still negotiating Total student contacts Still negotiating 6/5ths language If a teacher agreed to teach a seventh class because of site need, he or she would receive pay commensurate to 7/6ths of his or her salary. If a teacher agreed to teach a seventh and an eighth class, he or she would receive pay commensurate to 8/6ths of his or her salary. Teaching minutes in a day Still negotiating Collaboration The scheduling of collaboration time would be embedded in the contract language for the block schedule with the existing waiver language describing the purpose of collaboration time and the fact that it is teacher-driven. Transfer language If the block schedule becomes a reality, high school teachers at PV and Chico High would have first rights to transfer out of comprehensive high schools to other open positions that they are credentialed for and an interview process would govern decisions in the case of multiple candidates. Sunset clause Innovative scheduling would have a five-year sunset clause, which means that after four years, it would automatically reopen for negotiations. CUTA or the District could choose to end innovative scheduling at that time, or they could negotiate for it to continue. Flexible implementation year If innovative scheduling was adopted, the District could delay implementation for one year (from 2021-22 to 2022-23) if required by budgetary constraints. Finals schedule Still negotiating We will continue our discussions in February at our next session and after the two voluntary informational meetings scheduled for February 3 (CHS Lincoln Hall at 3:15 pm) and February 10 (PVHS Library at 3:00 pm). New Teacher Induction Program Costs The state has increased the new teacher induction program from a one-year requirement to a two-year requirement and has also increased the tuition cost from $3,000 to $3,600, for a total cost to new teachers of $7,200. This is an extreme hardship for many new teachers, who are often already saddled with student loans. Several years ago, the District offered to pay $3,000 towards the tuition cost. At the time, this covered the entire cost of the then one-year program. The District then offered to pay $1,500 of the cost “up front” to the new teacher induction program at the Butte County Office of Education to further help our new teachers. I want to be clear that the District came to CUTA and made these generous offers, which we were happy to negotiate. This increased cost comes at an unfortunate time, when money is tight in the District. Nonetheless, we are working with the District to try to alleviate this burden on new teachers. When I talked to BCOE about the induction program, they said that they are sometimes able to get grant money to reduce the tuition cost, but it is not guaranteed. We will also be looking at how surrounding districts are managing this increased cost to new teachers. If you’d like to see the current version of our contract, here is the link. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA team and the District met for negotiations on Thursday, January 16. We continued discussing special education, innovative scheduling at the high school, compensation and a host of other issues as well. Special Education The District shared their vision for significant change in the secondary mild/moderate special education program. In an effort to provide what they feel is the best program for students and in an effort to save money in the long term, the District plans to combine secondary mild/moderate SDC students and RSP students into one large pool of mild/moderate students. As students leave elementary school, there will no longer be a distinction between the two groups of students. The students will still receive everything allotted them by their IEPs, but they will not be identified as mild/moderate SDC students or RSP students. They will simply be considered mild/moderate special education students. As part of this new approach, the District will offer secondary mild/moderate SDC teachers the option to become RSP teachers. If a mild/moderate SDC teacher chooses to become an RSP teacher, she or he will have a caseload maximum of 28 (up from 20 in junior high and 22 in high school) and she or he will teach four periods and have on prep period and one assessment period. If a mild/moderate SDC teacher chooses to remain in her or his current position, nothing will change in terms of caseload, class size and teaching load; however, if some members of a site SDC team do choose to change and others don’t, it will necessarily have an impact on what subjects the remaining SDC teacher(s) will teach. Secondary sites will identify what classes are needed for the broader pool of mild/moderate students, and all the RSP teachers will need to teach the classes determined to be needed. The District hopes that RSP teachers at each site will work together to decide how best to split up teaching responsibilities. If a significant number of secondary mild/moderate SDC teachers choose to become RSP teachers, it is very likely that current RSP teachers will need to teach different classes in the future than they are accustomed to. How this will impact co-teaching and push-in support is still to be determined. The District first shared this idea with some of the affected teachers at a collaboration meeting a week ago, and they plan to hold more informational meetings in the near future so that mild/moderate SDC teachers can make an informed decision. Although your CUTA bargaining team shares an interest with the District in increasing the efficiency of the special education program and in providing relief to our special education teachers, we are troubled by this approach. There are so many unknowns, and it will have a significant, potentially negative, impact on current RSP teachers. Whether the potential benefits to students will materialize is also unknown. If the majority of secondary mild/moderate SDC teachers choose to become RSP teachers, it will save the District money, because they will need fewer teachers to handle the student load. The District has assured CUTA that they plan to reduce teaching positions through attrition rather than through layoffs, and we will work on language to guarantee that. We will also negotiate an RSP maximum class size, which is currently not part of the contract. Additionally, CUTA cannot stop the District from offering this option to secondary mild/moderate SDC teachers, and the District has the contractual right to reassign RSP teachers to different subjects/classes. If you are an affected member, and if possible, please attend the voluntary informational meetings when they are scheduled by the District. The union will have representation at these meetings as well, when possible, so that you can share your thoughts. Innovative Scheduling at the High Schools Below is an updated list describing the current stage of the process towards potentially changing to a new schedule at the high schools.
Simple majority vote to send to negotiations: 132 ballots cast 2 abstentions 88 Yes 67.7% 42 No 32.3%
Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations last Thursday, December 12. We continued our discussions about special education, we began preliminary discussions about compensation, and we explored other ongoing topics. Special Education The District will share their concept for restructuring the secondary RSP and SDC (mild/moderate) programs at a voluntary meeting on Wednesday, January 15, during collaboration time. All secondary RSP and SDC (mild/moderate) teachers are welcome. Many secondary RSP and SDC (mild/moderate) teachers have already planned to attend. Please contact Karen Olson (kolson@chicousd.org) for the exact time and location of the meeting if you’d like to attend. The District plans to hold more voluntary meetings to share their ideas. CUTA and the District are also working to find ways to provide support to elementary special education teachers. Elementary RSP teachers are considered 60% RSP teachers and 40% intervention teachers. If an elementary RSP teacher’s caseload goes over 16 (60% of the Ed code-mandated caseload of 28), then his or her intervention duties should be reduced, according to the District. The District monitors these numbers, and they identified four sites where the RSP teacher caseloads were high from early on in the school year. The District is moving to provide additional aide support at these sites to provide relief for these teachers. The sites are Shasta, Chapman, Marigold and Rosedale. We appreciate the District’s efforts to help these teachers. We will continue our discussions to find ways to help elementary RSP and SDC teachers. Compensation Kevin Bultema came to negotiations and shared the District’s first interim budget for the 2020-2021 school year. By necessity it is a very conservative document. The governor’s proposed budget doesn’t come out until January, so the District has to be conservative with its projections. At this time, there is a deficit to deal with in Chico Unified. In general, the District has three priorities it looks to meet: deficit reduction, compensation and programs. Over the last three years, the District made employee compensation its top priority, for which we are grateful, and we recognize the importance of dealing with deficit reduction. It is possible that the CUSD budget will look much better after the governor’s proposal in January. One of the interesting things that came up in this discussion is that the District faces increasing costs annually just to maintain existing programs. They plan to do an analysis of these increasing costs. Oftentimes, as members, we feel like the District is spending all of its money to continually add new programs instead of providing increased compensation. That certainly has not been true over the last three years of generous wage increases, and it really may be more perception than reality overall, when you consider that 90% of the CUSD budget goes to employee compensation for all employee groups. Both CUTA and the District share an interest in multi-year wage agreements. We both feel that our current wage agreement has created a peaceful and positive school district, where employees feel valued and the District can plan its budget accurately. We will continue this discussion when we have more detailed information from the state. The District also calculated the cost to complete the final restructuring of the salary schedule. Currently, our salary schedule, starting in year 19, has two steps where salary is frozen for three years, two more steps where salary is frozen for two years, and three single-year steps: years 29, 30, and 31. We would like to see the salary schedule top out at year 30, with year 19 being a single-year step, and years 20-21, 22-23, 24-25, 26-27, and 28-29 being two-year steps. This would be handled in a way that members can only benefit from, and we would not be removing the highest step on the salary schedule; you would simply reach the highest step in 30 years instead of 31 years. We began this process several years ago, and we want to consider finishing this restructuring based on the cost projections we get from the District. This benefits everybody. Newer teachers will be able to reach the top faster and retire sooner. Veteran teachers get the same benefit. The cost to complete this restructuring is around $800,000, which is close to the cost of 1% on the salary schedule. This is another option CUTA is exploring with the District for the 2020-2021 school year. Voluntary Transfers As stated in the last update, the District has shared an interest in modifying the current practice for voluntary transfers. As it stands, the District has to fly job openings internally first, and they have to consider all internal applicants before flying the job opening externally on EdJoin. They would prefer to be able to fly the open positions internally and externally at the same time. The District has proposed that CUSD Human Resources be allowed to fly positions internally and externally concurrently, and the external applicant pool would not be shared with administrators until all internal candidates have been considered. The District’s concern with the current practice is that it delays their ability to field a pool of strong external candidates because they have to wait until all internal candidates have been considered. CUTA has proposed strengthening the internal application process in two ways: the District will guarantee an interview with each internal candidate, and the District will guarantee written notice if the internal applicant is denied within a defined time period. If the District fails to follow the process, the member will receive a payment in recourse, perhaps $250. If the District agrees to this stronger language, CUTA would agree to allow them to fly positions internally and externally at the same time, and internal candidates would still need to be interviewed and considered before the external applicant pool can be viewed by administrators. If we move forward, it would be as a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that has to be renewed annually and can be terminated by either party at any time. Innovative Scheduling at the High Schools John Shepherd reviewed the proposed timeline which appears below with updated information. E-Board has decided on a ⅔ majority vote for step
Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Have a great holiday break! We have earned it. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Wednesday, November 20. We continued our long term discussion about the special education program, as well as discussing several other issues. Special Education The District has ideas for how to reorganize special education at the secondary level, and they are going to begin to hold voluntary meetings with secondary RSP and SDC teachers to share their vision. CUTA will wait to receive feedback from our RSP and SDC members before beginning any negotiating. In addition, we will need to begin more meaningful discussions on ways to support our elementary RSP and SDC teachers as well. The discussion is ongoing. On another topic concerning special education, the District is preparing to absorb the occupational therapists from BCOE. These occupational therapists (OTs) would be CUTA members. The existing BCOE salary schedule for OTs is only six steps, and it starts out much higher than the CUTA salary schedule, but it also ends much lower. The District is concerned that they will be unable to hire new OTs when needed with the lower starting pay, but CUTA is not interested in having a separate salary schedule for any of our members. We would welcome OTs as CUTA members, but they would have to be placed on our salary schedule. Although the starting pay might be lower, the OTs would end up in a much better position later in their careers and during retirement using our salary schedule. Elementary Assessment We asked again if the District was interested in providing 1.5 prep days for elementary assessment to TK-5 teachers. Although this was brought to the table initially by the District, they are not ready to make any budgetary commitments at this point in the year. CTSO Stipends We agreed on an MOU to expand the number of stipends for lead teachers of CTE pathways. If a teacher completes the requirements for one of these pathways, he or she will be eligible for the stipend. Currently, the stipends have been limited to three per secondary site, but more than three teachers per site were completing the requirements. The MOU goes into effect this year, and we will add it to the next tentative agreement (TA) to be voted on by CUTA membership. Repeated Information from Last Update We moved on to how the District handles differential pay for a member who misses work and has no sick leave. If a member is out sick and has no sick leave remaining, the District pays the member his or her daily rate minus the cost for the substitute teacher ($120/day). If the sick leave is long-term, the sub is getting paid at the long-term sub rate ($150/day). CUTA would like to standardize when a member is charged the long-term rate versus the short-term rate. CUTA has proposed that for the first ten days after the member's sick leave is exhausted, the District will deduct the short-term rate. Days eleven and beyond would be deducted at the long-term sub rate. This ensures that a member who has accumulated sick leave won’t be penalized. For instance, member 1 has 20 sick days saved up. Member 1 goes on a long term sick leave and runs out of sick leave after 20 days. Since the sub has already been in the classroom for twenty days and is receiving long-term sub pay, under our current practice that member would immediately start having $150/day deducted from his or her daily rate. Member 2 has no sick leave saved up and goes on a long-term sick leave. Under our current practice, the first ten days would be deducted at $120/day and day eleven and onward would be deducted at the long-term sub rate. This seems to punish the member who had saved up sick leave. We’d like the practice to be the same for members in both situations. The District is considering our proposal. As an aside, differential pay like this occurs even if the District doesn’t need to use a sub or even if the “sub” ends up being a more costly temporary teacher. Compensation Part of our three-year wage agreement with the District included a clause for how to share certain new dollars related to increased enrollment. If enrollment increased by more than 100 students, CUTA was entitled to 20% of all new dollars generated by all new students above 100. The enrollment increase still needs to be verified in January, but it appears that CUTA will get a small amount of money (approximately $35,000-$40,000) to apply to compensation. It will be too small to apply to wages in any meaningful way, so your bargaining team will be receiving direction from E-Board for possible areas to apply these dollars. As we began early discussions for possible compensation for next year, your bargaining team shared with the District that we would happily continue the formula used for the last three years. The District has concerns about the strain these raises have put on their budget, so we will continue discussions at our December session, when the District will have their first interim budget in place to explore together. The District is also running numbers for us to develop an estimated cost to complete the final restructuring of the salary schedule. Currently, our salary schedule, starting in year 19, has two steps where salary is frozen for three years, two more steps where salary is frozen for two years, and three single-year steps: years 29, 30, and 31. We would like to see the salary schedule top out at year 30, with year 19 being a single-year step, and years 20-21, 22-23, 24-25, 26-27, and 28-29 being two-year steps. This would be handled in a way that members can only benefit from, and we would not be removing the highest step on the salary schedule; you would simply reach the highest step in 30 years instead of 31 years. We began this process several years ago, and we want to consider finishing this restructuring based on the cost projections we get from the District. This benefits everybody. Newer teachers will be able to reach the top faster and retire sooner. Veteran teachers get the same benefit. Innovative Scheduling at the High Schools We continued to refine the timeline and process for the high schools’ innovative scheduling discussion. Some of this is still subject to E-Board’s decisions, and nothing is set in stone, but the general idea is as follows:
Voluntary Transfers The District has shared an interest in modifying the current practice for voluntary transfers. As it stands, the District has to fly job openings internally first, and they have to consider all internal applicants before flying the job opening externally on EdJoin. They would prefer to be able to fly the open positions internally and externally at the same time. Under this proposal, CUSD Human Resources would not share the external applicants with administrators until all internal candidates have been considered. The District’s concern with the current practice is that it delays their ability to field a pool of strong external candidates because they have to wait until all internal candidates have been considered. Although CUTA understands the District’s position, we are troubled by the idea. The District already has complete control over hiring, and the contract language requiring consideration of internal candidates first was hard to get. We will continue to discuss this issue in negotiations. Short Term Independent Study (IS) and Students on Medically Necessary Instruction (MNI) Based on questions from members, the bargaining team asked for more clarity and consistency concerning teacher responsibilities when students go on short term IS and also when students go on MNI. These are two different situations, but both scenarios have undergone changes over the last several years. The procedures and expectations still seem too variable on a site-by-site basis. We will work to develop more uniformity across the District. If you would like to see the current version of our contract, here is the link. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Thursday, October 24. We continued our long term discussion about the special education program, as well as discussing several other issues. In addition to continuing our interest-based bargaining process to work on special education, we spent time discussing the possibility of adding 1.5 prep days per year for elementary assessment. The idea is that teachers could use this time to complete assessments each trimester. The District bargaining team will recommend this and see whether there is money in the budget for this added cost. At our last session, the District agreed to increase the number of Career Technical Student Organization (CTSO) stipends to reflect the increase in Career Technical Education (CTE) pathways. Lead teachers for each CTE pathway at each high school would be eligible for the stipend as long as they meet the requirements stated in the contract. We are working on creating clear language to identify the lead teacher in each pathway. We moved on to how the District handles differential pay for a member who misses work and has no sick leave. If a member is out sick and has no sick leave remaining, the District pays the member his or her daily rate minus the cost for the substitute teacher ($120/day). If the sick leave is long-term, the sub is getting paid at the long-term sub rate ($150/day). CUTA would like to standardize when a member is charged the long-term rate versus the short-term rate. CUTA has proposed that for the first ten days after the member's sick leave is exhausted, the District will deduct the short-term rate. Days eleven and beyond would be deducted at the long-term sub rate. This ensures that a member who has accumulated sick leave won’t be penalized. For instance, member 1 has 20 sick days saved up. Member 1 goes on a long term sick leave and runs out of sick leave after 20 days. Since the sub has already been in the classroom for twenty days and is receiving long-term sub pay, under our current practice that member would immediately start having $150/day deducted from his or her daily rate. Member 2 has no sick leave saved up and goes on a long-term sick leave. Under our current practice, the first ten days would be deducted at $120/day and day eleven and onward would be deducted at the long-term sub rate. This seems to punish the member who had saved up sick leave. We’d like the practice to be the same for members in both situations. The District is considering our proposal. As an aside, differential pay like this occurs even if the District doesn’t need to use a sub or even if the “sub” ends up being a more costly temporary teacher. The District then spent some time sharing the current progress towards the potential for innovative scheduling at the high school. CUTA shared our tentative vision of the timeline for innovative scheduling.
From our conversations with members, it appears that we are still not close to achieving step 1 in the above timeline. CUTA is not holding this process up. It is a major change and high school teachers have lots of questions that they feel have not been adequately answered yet. We only have one negotiations session scheduled in November and one scheduled in December. We will continue our special education discussion and begin our discussion on wages and compensation. If you’d like to see the current version of our contract, here is the link. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues, Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Wednesday, September 25. We discussed a wide range of issues, and we agreed to set aside large chunks of this year’s bargaining sessions for the purpose of improving working conditions for special education teachers and the overall efficiency of special education programs. Over the past three years of negotiations, we have consistently added challenges faced by special education teachers to the agenda. Despite hours of discussion, both CUTA and the District felt that we were continually adding new agenda items without effectively solving previously added items. The list of challenges for special education just got longer and longer. Special education is challenging as it is dictated largely by underfunded federal mandates. Still, we believe that we can work together to make positive change. We will share more specific information about ideas for moving forward as we move through the interest based bargaining process (IBB). The IBB process emphasizes finding common interests on issues to facilitate making solutions. CUTA and the District share an interest in improving working conditions and increasing efficiency in the special education programs. We also discussed the progress being made with innovative scheduling at the high school. Since the interested parties (teachers and administrators) have settled on some form of an eight period block, we can begin discussing what contract language would be needed to represent that schedule. We can also begin negotiating student contact numbers. Your bargaining team wants to make it clear that we are waiting for a clear sign from the high schools that there is significant support for making a change of this magnitude. We don’t feel that has been demonstrated yet. Until we see that a specific schedule has been chosen and that teachers have come to a rough estimate for the number of student contacts they are willing to accept, we can’t move forward in negotiations in anything other than a hypothetical way. A multi-year test of a different high schedule will require new processes for CUTA. We need to be sure there is strong support for a specific approach among teachers at the high schools. As Kevin noted in an email last Thursday, Greg Ford, a PV math teacher and bargaining team member has spearheaded the effort to bring a STRS (State Teachers Retirement System) training to our next district-wide staff development day on Tuesday, October 15. The District has enthusiastically supported this idea. If you are interested in attending this training, you can sign up with the link below. As Kevin said, “Signing up doesn't mean you are obligated to go nor will you be turned away if you don't sign up. We are just trying to get a rough head count so we can reserve a big enough room and tell STRS how much material to bring.” The training is geared towards teachers in the early to middle parts of their careers. Here is the link. We moved on to a discussion of elementary assessment. The District has developed a new assessment continuum which they believe will lessen the burden of assessment in K-5. This continuum is being piloted by special education teachers this year. There was some confusion among elementary teachers about whether they were supposed to be using the continuum this year, and the District confirmed that the continuum is only being piloted by special education. Confusion may have stemmed from a link on the District site that displayed the continuum of assessments if you clicked on elementary assessment. That has been changed. The District has made CBM testing optional, and they have replaced the CCCS assessments with interim assessment blocks after teachers indicated their dislike for the CCCS assessments. The continuum of assessments will also eliminate baseline testing for most students. We hope that this will make elementary assessment more manageable. Your bargaining team brought up the idea of returning to the model in which each teacher had a small assessment budget to allow for two sub days for assessment during the year, but the District is not interested in moving in that direction at this time. Lastly, we discussed the possibility of having one stipend per CTE pathway at the high schools. Originally, the three stipends per high school in the contract was enough to cover the need, but these programs have expanded significantly. We will return to this discussion at our next session. Wage Agreement (repeat information from the last bargaining update) We are entering the final year of our three year wage agreement, and this year the per ADA percent change for Chico Unified is 3.47%. With a tiny adjustment based on changes in last year’s number,this means our raise this year is 3.48%. This 3.48% increase is applied to the salary schedule, the District health benefits contribution, and all other compensation related dollar amounts in the contract. With this final raise in the three year agreement, we have earned a 13.42% total compounded raise over the three years. In addition, the District covered their portion of the increased contribution to STRS without passing those costs on to us. We will explore future compensation increases over the course of this school year. The District was a willing and generous partner in negotiating these wage increases. We appreciate the District’s commitment to making compensation a top priority. This wage agreement is structured to wait until September to get the most accurate percentage possible from the state. Your September check will include the 3.48% raise, and you will receive a small retro check in mid October for the 3.48% missing from your August check. In October, the new health benefit premiums go into effect, and they did go up this year, so you may see a slight decline in your check from September to October. Here is the link to the new CUTA salary schedule on the District website. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. If you’d like to look at our contract, here is the link. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for our first negotiations session of the school year on Thursday, September 12. We discussed a wide range of topics that will occupy much of our bargaining time this school year, with an emphasis on special education, all-day kindergarten, elementary assessment and employee compensation. Wage Agreement We are entering the final year of our three year wage agreement, and this year the per ADA percent change for Chico Unified is 3.47%. With a tiny adjustment based on changes in last year’s number,this means our raise this year is 3.48%. This 3.48% increase will be applied to the salary schedule, the District health benefits contribution, and all other compensation related dollar amounts in the contract. With this final raise in the three-year agreement, we have earned a 13.42% total compounded raise over the three years. In addition, the District covered their portion of the increased contribution to STRS without passing those costs on to us. We will explore future compensation increases over the course of this school year. The District was a willing and generous partner in negotiating these wage increases. We appreciate the District’s commitment to making compensation a top priority. We structured the wage agreement to wait until September to get the most accurate percentage possible from the state. Your September check will include the 3.48% raise, and you will receive a small retro check in mid-October for the 3.48% missing from your August check. In October, the new health benefit premiums go into effect, and they did go up this year, so you may see a slight decline in your check from September to October. Here is the link to the new CUTA salary schedule on the District website. Negotiations for 2020-21 The Camp Fire was a disaster on a historic scale. We will feel the fallout for years to come. One way in which Chico Unified has been impacted is through increased enrollment. Welcoming new students to our District can make staffing difficult to plan at times, and the permanence of the enrollment increases from the Camp Fire have been hard to judge. Our special education programs have been strained in some areas by these enrollment increases, and this has been coupled with a shortage of teaching candidates for these positions. The District is working hard to find a solution for overages in caseload and class size in SDC at the junior highs. The high schools appear to be adequately staffed for the moment, but the numbers continue to change. CUTA will discuss the District’s options with affected members in the coming days. Special education in general appears to be an increasingly complicated and difficult position. Our special education teachers work with some of our most vulnerable students, and many feel increasingly overwhelmed by the needs of their students and the requirements of the job. We are planning to spend a lot of time this year working with the District on ways we can relieve some of the pressure on our special education teachers. Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes. The issues are multiple and diverse. I will not try to list them all here. We spent time in negotiations reviewing and adding to our list for the school year. Thank you to members who have shared their concerns with us. In addition, we are continuing to expand our all-day K program through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the District. As new schools transition to all-day K, new issues and unintended consequences crop up. This is why we are using an MOU. We hope to resolve as many issues as possible before committing to permanent contract language. We will begin work on permanent language this year. We also are considering adding an additional step in the grievance process. Currently, there are no active grievances, and it is a testament to the close and transparent working relationship between CUTA and the District that we have had no grievances for several years. When a grievance does occur, CUTA and the District share an interest in adding a mediation step before the grievance goes to arbitration. Arbitration is a very costly process with a long timeline. Adding a mediation step--in which a state-appointed mediator reviews the issue and attempts to solve it--could be a cost and time effective way to resolve a grievance. We are currently studying mediation contract language in nearby districts. Lastly, CUTA and the District are working with STRS to provide employee retirement training sessions at two of the Districtwide staff development days this year. Our goal is to provide a training targeted towards teachers in their mid-careers and a training targeted towards teachers at the end of their careers. Thank you to the District for enthusiastically agreeing to allow these trainings to occur during their staff development days. As we open negotiations for the 2020-2021 school year, CUTA looks forward to continuing to grow the positive, transparent and productive relationship with the District that has developed over the last three years. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. If you would like to look at our contract, here is the link. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association |
AuthorSMichelle Bunch serves as Vice President and Public Relations Chair for CUTA. Archives
June 2020
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