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Bargaining Update

1/31/2020

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

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Bargaining Update

1/16/2020

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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.

On December 2, a committee of teachers and administrators will meet to approve a schedule to be sent to the high school teachers for a vote to approve sending the schedule on to negotiations. The main decisions here will be whether to have an anchor day or not and whether to have a plus period or not. The vote to send the schedule on to negotiations would be achieved with a simple majority of voting members at the high school sites. The recommended schedule to be voted on is an eight period block with no anchor day and no plus period. Discussions to add the plus period with a waiver after it has been more clearly defined will continue at one or both high schools.
If the simple majority is achieved, your bargaining team will negotiate applicable items, such as student contacts, class sizes, prep periods, etc. The simple majority was achieved. See vote totals below. This means your CUTA bargaining team is currently negotiating the particulars of this schedule including, but not limited to, prep time, student contacts, maximum class size, 6/5ths language, teaching minutes in a day (contract language), collaboration time, transfer language, five year sunset clause, flexible implementation year, professional development opportunities, and special education prep time.

Simple majority vote to send to negotiations:
132 ballots cast
2 abstentions
88 Yes 67.7%
42 No 32.3%

This step is still to be determined by E-Board, but the current thought is that the high schools would vote to adopt the negotiated schedule at both sites with a minimum of 75% support from all affected members (one site can’t be at 60% while the other is at 95%--it has to be 75% or higher at both sites). E-Board settled on a ⅔ majority vote, which must be achieved at both sites. Kevin Moretti summarized E-Board’s thought process on this in a recent email.

If this vote is successful, then, after further E-Board consideration, the innovative schedule would go into the next tentative agreement to be voted on by all CUTA members, which would pass within a simple majority of voting members.

The schedule would be subject to a sunset clause, which means that after an agreed upon period of time (perhaps five years), it would expire unless renegotiated by and agreed to by both sides.

It is important to note the fourth step listed above. If the negotiated schedule is approved by the high schools and E-Board, all members would need to vote to approve the new schedule in our next tentative agreement. Whatever the particulars are of a final negotiated schedule, this will be expensive. Your bargaining team shared a concern with the District that members may find it hard to vote to approve an expensive new program at the high school if there is no assurance that future wage increases will be addressed.

Compensation

Now that we have reached the third and final year of our wage agreement with the District, we are discussing possible compensation increases for next year and beyond. The District has expressed a concern that their annually increasing costs for general expenses and existing programs have outpaced the money left after our recent raises, producing a deficit. They shared a detailed budget analysis that showed where some of these increasing expenses are. Overall, it appears that annual increases in general expenses and programs fluctuate significantly. In addition, the cost to maintain and replace Chromebooks throughout the District over time is not insignificant.

Your bargaining team, at the behest of your E-Board, has continued to express interest in another multi-year wage agreement, although the District is more interested in a “reset” year in which they can address deficit concerns. The District feels that they have to balance three main concerns in their budget: compensation, programs, and deficit. They have addressed compensation over the last three years, and they feel they need to pivot to deficit reduction next year. One-time dollars instead of ongoing compensation was discussed as a possibility. Completing the salary schedule collapse, as described in the next paragraph, was also discussed as a possible option for next year..

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.

Voluntary Transfer

CUTA has agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the District concerning voluntary transfers. This MOU goes into effect immediately, so it’s important for members to understand their rights. The MOU guarantees a member who applies for an open position will get an interview with the relevant administrator (by phone or in person), and the member is also guaranteed a written response within 5 business days if he or she is not chosen. If the member is not interviewed or is not notified in writing, the member is owed $250 from the District. To qualify, the member must respond to the human resources email announcing the opening. They may not just contact the relevant administrator directly. The MOU also allows the District to fly the position internally and externally concurrently, but administrators may not see the external pool of candidates until they have exhausted internal applicants via the process described above.

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

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