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Your bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Wednesday, January 30. We continued negotiations on a variety of topics that carried over from our last session.
We started off the morning by discussing ways to clarify Table 7.6.1, found at the end of Article 7, which describes class sizes and caseloads in special education. CUTA and the District share an interest in making changes to this table to reflect the realities of the existing programs in Chico Unified. In addition, we both want special education teachers to understand the mechanisms and situations in which additional help will be provided to special education classrooms as suggested by current language in the contract. The contract lists special education class size ranges that, when exceeded, can trigger additional support. Diane Olsen joined the negotiating teams on Wednesday and shared the process by which additional help for individual students can be requested, evaluated and provided if necessary as decided by the special education team assigned to the given student. She believes that we can adapt this process to be used in situations when the number of students (class size) may necessitate additional support. She also provided two reorganized tables that reflected the reality of current CUSD special education programs and could possibly replace the existing Table 7.6.1. Both teams appreciated her work on this issue, and we will continue to negotiate. CUTA also has an interest in settling on a class size for RSP teachers. This is currently undefined in the contract. EdCode sets an RSP teacher’s caseload at 28 students, but there is no language about class size. There was some discussion about potentially creating a class size and total daily student contact for RSP teachers, but no hard numbers were officially discussed or proposed. We moved on to short term independent study, and the District shared that their policy will be that short-term independent study can be assigned for absences that last five days or more or ten days or less. In special circumstances, the District can assign short-term independent study for up to 15 days, but any short-term independent study lasting 11 days or more will need to be approved at the District, not site, level. The District will be sharing this information with their administrators. Teachers have the option to assign their own classroom work to students and hold students accountable for that work when they return. Teachers also may choose to assign generic packet work, which is currently available for elementary school and middle school, but if teachers choose to assign packet work, they may not hold students accountable for missed classroom work. Teachers must also “assess” packet work upon a student’s return, but it can be at the simple level of “credit/no credit.” High school packet work is in the process of being designed. Teachers could also assign some of their own classroom work and some packet work. Next, we briefly reviewed changes to the new preschool job descriptions. We agreed on the changes and approved the job descriptions. Tim Cariss joined us in the afternoon to share the results of his meeting with several representatives from special education. They met to discuss ways to improve the process for uploading changes to student testing accommodations for the SBAC tests. All involved in the meeting agreed that there was no perfect solution, but they settled on special education teachers printing out the page of the IEP document that lists accommodations and providing that to their SBAC site coordinators. We spent a good portion of the afternoon discussing member concerns with the quantity of assessments at elementary, and most specifically in grades TK-2. The District does a lot of the selection and deletion of assessments through the DLC. CUTA suggested that it might be possible to solicit more direct input from elementary teachers, even though the DLC is made up of teachers. The District has agreed to ask its DLC members to ask for specific feedback on the quantity of assessment at a future staff meeting. CUTA is considering surveying impacted members about specific assessments to move this discussion forward. Lastly, we want to check in with kindergarten teachers who are teaching all-day K to assess how the MOU is functioning this year. We want to iron out any issues before we begin to write permanent contract language. We are trying to schedule this meeting for a district wide staff development day. We will share more information as it becomes available. If you’d like to look at the contract, the link is here. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association
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Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Thursday, January 17, and we discussed a wide range of issues. We began the day by reviewing a table from the contract that lists the class sizes and caseloads for our special education teachers. The table is unclear in certain ways, and we are working to clarify the intent of the various columns. Currently, we are not trying to change class sizes or caseloads as described in the table. We are simply trying to make the table easier to understand. As we continue working on this issue, CUTA has an interest in agreeing on a maximum class size for RSP teachers, because that is not in the contract at this time. In addition, the table has a column listing class size ranges. The intent of this column is described in 7.6.1, which requires “appropriate additional support services” when a class size exceeds the listed range. We want to clarify what those supports entail. Next, we checked in on the new task being required of some of our special education teachers related to the interim SBAC assessments. Some teachers are now required to manually enter SBAC testing accommodations, because the District is only uploading that information one time in September. Tim Cariss has sent out an invite to some special education teachers to try to develop a more efficient model for next year. We then asked the District about short term independent study options in secondary schools. When students go on short term independent study, teachers are to be notified five days in advance. Teachers may assign their own classroom work and hold the students accountable upon return for that work, or teachers may assign a District-developed packet. If a teacher assigns the District packet, he or she must N/A his or her own classroom work for the student during the student’s absence. Teachers may even assign a combination of their own work and the District-developed work, and they can hold students accountable for the classroom work they assign. Currently, the packet work for high school has not been developed, but it is in the works. Packets for all classes in middle school, including electives, are available, and middle school administrators are being notified about its availability. If a teacher assigns packet work, he or she is required to score it, but that can be as simple as scoring it “credit/no credit”. In addition, the District practice has been to only offer independent study for absences of 5-10 days. In other words, short term independent study cannot be assigned for four or fewer days or 11 or more days. However, the District discovered that EdCode allows for short term independent study to be assigned for up to 15 days, so the District is going to decide on a firm policy. They may extend the allowable short term independent study window up to 15 days. We were able to decide on the broad strokes of preschool job descriptions with the input of the preschool teachers. There are a couple of details still to understand fully and add to the job descriptions, but we are largely complete. The District had shared an interest in adding the parent-teacher conference minimum days waiver to the contract. We asked members at schools not using the waiver for their input, and they were not interested in changing their schedules and their parent-teacher conference model at this time. We shared their points of view with the District, and we will not be adding this waiver to the contract. Schools are welcome to continue using this waiver, and CUTA is happy to help any sites that are interested in exploring this waiver. We spent a little time reviewing the timeline for developing contract language for the all-day K model, which is currently being practiced under an MOU. The MOU lays out the basic ingredients for the final contract language, and both CUTA and the District recognize the importance of getting this contract language right, so we will continue to examine what is working and what needs to be tweaked before writing the official contract language during this year and next. CUTA will be meeting with all-day K teachers to get their input on the current MOU. We began, or restarted, a discussion about elementary assessment. Some of our elementary teachers, and especially our TK-3 primary teachers, have expressed concern about the quantity of assessment occurring. The District felt that they were getting adequate teacher input about assessment through the DLC model. CUTA asked for the DLC members to hold assessment feedback sessions during an upcoming staff meeting at their sites, and it will be important for members to share specific concerns about assessment that DLC members can take back to the District. In addition, the District is going to provide their estimate of how long each assessment should take, with the recognition that many assessments have widely variable lengths depending on student ability. CUTA will attempt to make the same calculations, and we will see how far apart our assumptions are. This will help guide future discussions. Lastly, the District shared the results from their survey of high school teachers in regards to innovative scheduling at the high schools. The District, at the direction of the School Board, has been investigating teacher interest in a different high school schedule to benefit our students. The changes would be so substantial that the traditional waiver process would not be sufficient. The District has worked hard to enlist teachers to explore various options and share these options with their colleagues. After much work and discussion, the teachers voted 77% to 23% to continue the discussion. We meet with the District again on Wednesday, January 30. We will be going through the formal process to open negotiations for next year. If you have not already done so, please take a moment to complete the one-question survey which can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7G73F68 Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. If you would like to look over our contract, you can click the following link: http://www.chicouta.org/contract.html Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Thursday, 12/13/18. We were scheduled to meet on 11/8/18 and 11/30/18, but the Camp Fire occurred. Returning to negotiations was part of the process of returning to normal in our District.
We began negotiations with a discussion of special education class sizes and caseloads. Diane Olsen attended to share her expertise, and we went through the entire interest based bargaining process to approach this issue, which has multiple components. To give a little background, RSP teachers have an Ed Code defined caseload of 28, but our other special education teachers do not have an Ed Code defined caseload. In Article 7 of our contract, we have language that identifies class size/caseload ranges and maximum class sizes and caseloads for our special education programs, but we have no language identifying class size for RSP teachers. Additionally, our contract language, which was adopted from BCOE many years ago, does not distinguish between class sizes and caseloads. To add to the confusion, we have contract language that states that teachers who go over the suggested ranges should receive “appropriate additional support services,” which is rather vague. Quite frankly, it’s all a bit of a mess. CUTA has a potential interest in establishing class sizes for RSP teachers and in clarifying the rest of the language relating to class sizes and caseloads for our other special education teachers. The District shares an interest in clarifying the language and in clarifying what “appropriate additional support services” means in practice. CUTA is concerned that, because RSP has no contractual class size, the District could theoretically put 38 students into an RSP teacher’s classroom. To be clear, the District has not done this and we don’t believe that they intend to do this, but we always feel better when there is clear language in the contract. This is a potentially long discussion because of the wide variety of program styles and approaches in the different special education programs in elementary, middle school and high school. We will keep you informed as we continue negotiating. In the afternoon, we were joined by Tim Cariss to discuss additional duties assigned to special education teachers related to the interim SBAC assessments. One purpose of the interim SBAC assessments is for students who receive testing accommodations to get a chance to practice using the accommodations. These accommodations can be assigned in two ways. The District can conduct a mass upload of all CUSD data from the Special Education Information System (SEIS), which includes the accommodations as assigned in IEP meetings, or they can do piecemeal manual uploads for individual students or groups of students. In the past, the mass upload was conducted soon before the start of official state testing in April, but now that we are giving interim SBAC assessments, the District conducted the mass upload at the end of September. That means that special education teachers have to notify their SBAC site coordinators of any changes to student accommodations made during annual IEPs so that the site coordinator can make those changes manually. It’s added another layer of work to the special education teachers in a time when many of them already feel that completing their job is a challenge. To add to the complexity, many non-special education students receive SBAC accommodations as well, and those accommodations also have to make it into the SBAC testing system. Tim Cariss will be emailing a group of special education teachers to see whether anyone has ideas for making this process more efficient. We moved on to a brief discussion of the 504 process, and we shared two more concerns that counselors shared with us. Jim Hanlon and Diane Olsen are preparing their responses, and we will share their answers with counselors. Next, Jim Hanlon shared the District’s job descriptions for preschool teachers. Currently, we have three state-funded preschools in Chico Unified, and there are plans to add a fourth. The preschool teachers are CUTA members, and we have an interest in negotiating a job description that meets their expectations and the needs of the program. We will meet with the preschool teachers and gather their input on the District’s perspective of what their job should include. Lastly, we discussed the waivers in place at many elementary schools in which schools “bank” minutes over the course of the year, which allows for one week of minimum days following the parent conference day, along with a minimum day on the day before winter break and the day before summer vacation. The schools utilizing this waiver work five extra minutes every day to generate the minutes needed for the seven minimum days. The District is interested in adding this to the contract so that all schools follow the same schedule. At this time, CUTA is not interested in adding this language to the contract. There are sites that feel that their current schedule best serves the needs of the parents of their populations. CUTA will continue to facilitate any sites that are interested in trying out this waiver. The last month and a half have been a test for our District. The Camp Fire and its aftermath are unprecedented. All I can say is thank you to all of our colleagues who have worked tirelessly for our community. It is your work that will keep us moving forward. Take care of yourselves and of your colleagues. If you would like to look through our contract, here is the link: http://www.chicouta.org/contract.html Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Wednesday, October 24. It was a very productive session that highlighted again the positive, transparent and cooperative partnership that CUTA and the District have forged over the last several years. We reached agreement on several issues, and we continued to work on other issues with mutual interest.
The District would like to add the class size MOU into the contract. This is the MOU that drops secondary class size to 38 and allows secondary teachers to voluntarily increase their caseload from 175 up to 180. For each increase of one in caseload, the teacher is paid $500 per semester, up to $2500 for a caseload of 180, per semester. In elementary school, the District is already able to go over the class size of 33 by one to 34 in 30% of classrooms. This is not voluntary on the teacher’s part, but the MOU pays these teachers $500 per semester if they are selected to go to 34 students. We will create contract language for you to vote on in the next tentative agreement (TA). Next we put together an MOU for special education teachers at Inspire, because the schedule at Inspire does not match our contract. The MOU also codifies the District practice of giving CUSD employees at Inspire the right to transfer to an open special education position in Chico Unified after two years of service at Inspire. This is another example of the District treating our members well. We moved on to continuing the discussion about the assigning of work to students who have been suspended. Education Code says teachers may assign work to students who have been suspended, but local School Boards can expand student rights, and our School Board is planning to change that may to shall. Our discussions on this topic are not over, but one option would be to give teachers two choices. A teacher could either provide work for the student at the start of the suspension, and the work would be due upon return, or a teacher could allow the same number of days as the suspension length for the student to make up the work upon return. For example, if a student was suspended for 5 days, they would have five days after returning to make up missing work. We also said it would be very useful if suspended students could use their Chromebooks while suspended, because many teachers provide assignments through Google Classroom. We had some reports that students on in-school suspension were not allowed to use their Chromebooks, and the District agreed to look into that. The District then shared the responses they had crafted in response to concerns expressed by counselors about the 504 process. We read through the District responses and suggested some additions. That document will be shared soon with counselors, and then we can continue to work towards helping our counselors feel more comfortable with 504s, which can be very challenging to develop and organize. We then turned our discussions to the MAA program. The District has a large payback to make to the MAA program, but at some point MAA payments to the District may return. We are exploring ways in which the program may change. Currently, very few CUTA members are eligible to complete the MAA surveys which generate money for the District. These members include special education teachers, counselors, speech therapists and nurses. One option would be to share the CUTA portion of future MAA funding with the eligible members’ departments to spend on extras to supplement those departments’ needs. The exact structure of such an arrangement is still under discussion, but the District agrees with it in principle. We will continue these discussions. Next we moved on to a new task that special education teachers are facing due to the District’s desire for students to take interim math and ELA SBAC tests. Many special education students receive accommodations on the SBAC test, and the SBAC testing system communicates with the special education recording system to apply these accommodations listed on special education students’ IEPs. In the past, the District passed the data in early spring so that the most up to date IEP information was shared with the SBAC testing system. Now, with students taking interim SBAC tests, the District passed the data from the special education recording system to the SBAC testing system in the early fall. Any new accommodations from IEP meetings held between September and April will need to be entered by hand by the special education teachers. Tim Cariss will be attending a future negotiations session to explain the process. We hope to figure out a way to minimize the impact on special education teachers. Lastly, we continued our negotiations on leave and return rights for members. We began this discussion last spring. Current contract language grants members the right to return to the same site if they go on maternity or child care leave (or any succession of the two) for 130 days or less. The District has agreed to expand this contractual return rights language to all leaves available in the contract, subject to all other contractual components of these leaves. Our leave policies are in Article 10. This is another example of the District listening to CUTA’s concerns and acting in good faith. We appreciate the clarity that this expansion of leave rights means for our members. Now members will have the right to return to their site for all leaves lasting up to 130 days, subject to your approval in our next TA. Lastly, we will be going through our entire interest based bargaining process to work on the District practice of placing SDC students in RSP classes at the secondary level. Diane Olsen will attend our session on November 8, and we appreciate her joining the teams to work through this issue. Here is the link to our current contract: http://www.chicouta.org/contract.html 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 11, to continue our ongoing discussions of a number of different topics in Chico Unified. John Bohannon joined us to discuss how we can protect our members who provide special education services at charter schools. As part of the laws governing charter schools, the District to provide special education services if charter schools request them. We do charge the charter schools for these services, but our members are working on sites where they may not receive all the benefits of our contract. John explained the process for our members to get help if they have a problem, contractual or otherwise, at a charter school. Although CUSD is not “in charge” of any charter schools, they can mediate and solve problems for members at these sites, so for many problems, our members can go directly to Diane Olsen or John (or his replacement). For problems related to unprofessional conduct of a charter director/principal, our members can file a complaint directly with the School Board. Our members take these positions voluntarily, and the District’s current practice is to allow them to transfer to a CUSD position that becomes available. We are considering writing contract language that states that practice, but we will experiment with an MOU first. CUSD is only providing special education services to three charter schools, and these three may elect to forgo our services. If they do, we do not have to provide services for them anymore, which would solve the problem. We then spent time crafting an MOU that will allow the high schools to continue to use a modified schedule for finals week and also allows for a two-week modified schedule for SBAC testing without violating the contract. Both the schedule for finals and the schedule for SBAC testing would be subject to a simple majority vote at each high school. Middle school is included in this MOU but are not currently using modified schedules. The MOU will go to E-Board for approval. We moved on to finalizing an MOU that will allow the District to help our new teachers by paying half of the up-front cost of the BCOE BTSA induction program. The District still pays our new teachers a total of $3,000 for BTSA. This MOU simply shifts the payment to help new teachers faced with large up-front costs. We are exploring how units for salary schedule progression would be awarded for completing BTSA. The District feels that new teachers should receive 12 units of District-approved units for salary schedule progression, but these units would not “travel” outside the District if the teacher went to teach elsewhere. There may be a way for new teachers to buy these units so they would be durable. We are also looking into how mentor teachers could earn units. Mentor teachers are paid a stipend of $1,800 per year, so we will examine how that may impact receiving units. Our next topic involved the assigning of work to students who have been suspended. Education Code says teachers may assign work to students who have been suspended, but local School Boards can expand student rights, and our School Board is planning to change that may to shall. Our discussions on this topic are not over, but one option would be to give teachers two choices. A teacher could either provide work for the student at the start of the suspension, and the work would be due upon return, or a teacher could allow the same number of days as the suspension length for the student to make up the work upon return. For example, if a student was suspended for 5 days, they would have five days after returning to make up missing work. We also said it would be very useful if suspended students could use their Chromebooks while suspended, because many teachers provide assignments through Google Classroom. We had some reports that students on in-school suspension were not allowed to use their Chromebooks, and the District agreed to look into that. Diane Olsen joined us in the afternoon to discuss concerns counselors have expressed about the 504 process. The District is crafting a response to the counselors’ concerns, which we will be sharing with affected members. The District stressed repeatedly that they do not want counselors to feel alone or unsupported during the 504 process. They also emphasized that it was the job of administrators to make sure that implementation of 504s is happening appropriately in classrooms. In addition, Diane shared that the District is looking into a different platform to use for the online forms that will hopefully streamline and improve the functionality of filling out the extensive paperwork. More information will be forthcoming. CUTA and CUSD then agreed to go through the full interest based bargaining process to address the practice of placing SDC students into RSP teachers’ classes. We have a disagreement about the implication of this practice for RSP caseloads, and we both feel that we need to use our IBB training to work towards a resolution. This process is scheduled for November 8. Finally, we spent time discussing the future of the MAA program and how it might work in our district. Because there are so few members eligible for participating in the MAA program, CUTA suggested that eligible member groups (RSP, SDC, speech therapists, nurses, among others), receive a proportional part of future MAA funds to spend on needs within their member group. The District is looking into the feasibility of our suggestion. To be clear, there are no MAA dollars for distribution currently. The District has back payments they need to make to MAA before any of the above could occur. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Below is a link to our contract if you would like to learn more. http://www.chicouta.org/contract.html Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association The CUTA Organizing Committee hosted their first kid-friendly social with a picnic at Hooker Oak Park on September 28, 2018. The event was well attended and enjoyed by our members and their families. CUTA provided hot dogs, chips, cookies, water, and watermelon. Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District met for negotiations on Wednesday, September 26. We discussed a number of issues, and both teams continue to work together in a very respectful, transparent and productive way. We first worked on modifying contract language related to how CUTA is able to provide release time for members who are conducting union work. The existing contract language was unclear, and the District wants to make sure that it is following any applicable laws relating to STRS. We cleaned up the language and clarified the amount of release time that is allowed and who is responsible for paying for different expenses related to the release time. We are very close to an agreement on this issue. We also came to an agreement on an MOU that will allow the District to help our new teachers who are going through the BTSA induction program at BCOE. We had already negotiated contract language in the past in which the District would reimburse new teachers up to $3,000 for BTSA induction programs. This new MOU expands how the District can help our new teachers. BTSA is now a two-year program again, and the BCOE BTSA program is $6,000 total ($3,000 each year). It is a serious hardship for young teachers to come up with $3,000 at the start of the school year for two years in a row. The District worked out an agreement with BCOE in which the District pays BCOE $1,500 at the start of each year, and the new teacher is responsible for the remaining fee in monthly payments, which are much more manageable. This is an example of the District coming up with a way to help our members, and we appreciate it very much. This is available this year to new teachers. Contact the District office to find out the details. We then moved on to discussing a potential MOU that would allow the high schools to continue to use a modified schedule during SBAC testing and both finals weeks. We are still getting all the details worked out, but the impression we have from the high schools is that our members want to be able to use a modified schedule during these times, and this MOU would allow it to happen without violating our contract. The bulk of our morning and afternoon was spent discussing concerns raised by counselors about the 504 process. Based on the information we had gathered in advance from counselors, it appears that the concerns are mainly with how the 504 process works at the secondary level. CUTA provided the District with a list of very specific concerns, and we had a healthy discussion about the 504 process. We reviewed the District-mandated process for 504s from start to finish, and we examined some of the forms in use. The District is preparing a response to the concerns which will be designed to clarify certain parts of the process and also to alleviate some of the concerns expressed by the counselors. CUTA will work with the District on this response, and we will share it when we have it completed. The District emphasized that it does not want counselors to be fearful or to feel alone in the 504 process. We will provide more information soon. Diane Olsen will be attending at a future date to discuss RSP caseloads and other issues relating to special education. John Bohannon will be attending at future date before he moves to his new position in Oroville to discuss how our members that are assigned to charter schools can have their contractual rights protected. Kevin Bultema will be attending a future session to discuss the current status of the MAA program. The District owes a large back payment to MAA, and until that is settled, we are in limbo. We may modify our current contract language to reflect the new reality of the program. Both sides have ideas about how we could most effectively utilize this program in the future. Lastly, we spent time examining the current language related to return rights in the contract. CUTA has an interest in allowing members who go on leave to return to the same site they went on leave from, but depending on the length of the leave, the District has an interest in not disrupting the site climate. Currently, members have the right to return to their site after maternity leave up to 130 days. CUTA is interested in expanding this right to other types of leaves. Military leave is an exception, because it is governed by other laws. In case you want to learn more about our contract, the link to our contract at the CUTA website is http://www.chicouta.org/contract.html. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Additional Bargaining UpdateHello colleagues,
If you are nearing retirement, I wanted to share two more pieces of information from our negotiations session last Thursday. First, CUTA and the District plan to continue with the MOU allowing the District to offer an "early tell" retirement incentive. If you provide the District with a letter saying you plan to retire at the end of this school year, you will receive a small bonus. If you turn your letter in by February 1, they will pay you $1,000. If you submit the letter by March 1, they will pay you $500. Additionally, I wanted to share the new District contributions to retiree health benefits. Because the retiree premium rates are tiered, there are two different contributions. For an eligible retiree with a spouse and/or family, the District contribution is $1,454 per month. For an eligible single retiree, the District contribution is $1,018 per month. Please refer to the contract, Article 9, available at the link below, for eligibility requirements for retirees. The link is also a great way for anyone to view our contract at the Chico Unified Teachers Association website. http://www.chicouta.org/contract.html Thanks 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 on Thursday, September 13, for the first negotiations session of the 2018-2019 school year. We began the session by reviewing the wage agreement ratified last spring. Based on the agreement and the numbers from the state, the wage increase for this school year will be 6.98%. The District contribution for health benefits will also increase by 6.98%, which means it will be approximately $1,196 per month. This increase will be adopted by the Board on Wednesday. These changes will appear on the paycheck you receive at the end of September. In addition, the District will be issuing a retro check in mid-October to make up the difference for your August check, which did not have the wage increase for this year. This is a sizeable raise, and it shows that the District and the School Board were willing to put employee compensation at the top of their list of priorities. The District took a risk by making a generous multi-year wage agreement with us, and, unfortunately, their worst case scenario is unfolding right now. First of all, their predicted enrollment increase for this year has not materialized. More students would have meant more money, and that would have given them more financial flexibility. In addition, the District was counting on approximately $4 million in one-time money this year. The state legislature decided to instead give that money as ongoing dollars. Although that sounds like good news, and it was for our raise, it means that the $4 million became part of the employee compensation agreement, and the District could no longer use it for other financial needs. As employees, we need to understand the position the District is in. They will be looking for ways to save money across the district. As we negotiate this year, we have to be realistic. We will have to choose carefully as we look at our agenda for negotiations. The District made a serious commitment to its employees with this wage agreement. We need to respect the position they are in this year. We also began our discussion on contract language for all-day K, which is meant to represent the current MOU language. We will be moving slowly on this so that we can get feedback from teachers and administrators on how the MOU is working. In addition, the District shared with us changes to the BTSA program. It is returning to being a two year program, and the Butte County Office of Education (BCOE) will be offering the program for $3,000 annually ($6,000 in total). The District understands that coming up with $3,000 “up front”, so to speak, is a hardship for beginning teachers. They have worked out an arrangement with BCOE in which the District pays $1,500 up front each year, and the beginning teachers are responsible for the remaining $1,500 in monthly payments. We have contract language that the District will reimburse up to $3,000 for BTSA, and this would help beginning teachers manage the annual cost by providing the money as a down payment to BCOE. We will develop an MOU to this effect in the coming weeks. Other topics we discussed included:
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, May 10, to begin discussing issues for next year. We covered a wide range of issues, with most of the time being spent on the potential scheduling changes for RSP and SDC secondary teachers and on the finer points of the MOU for independent study programs at secondary sites. Scheduling Changes for RSP/SDC Teachers Last year, a group of secondary SDC teachers approached CUTA to share their concerns about the increasing challenges they faced in their job. CUTA and the District worked with the SDC secondary teachers to put together a list of challenges and possible solutions. Despite a lot of time and thought, we were unable to find solutions that appealed to the majority of the SDC teachers who were in contact with CUTA. We felt stuck and unsure of how to proceed. The District, separate from CUTA input, decided that one solution would be to utilize current, existing resources available at the secondary level to mitigate the challenges faced by the SDC secondary teachers. One current, existing resource that the District identified was the assessment period, sometimes called the case management period, that is a part of RSP secondary teachers’ schedules. Secondary RSP teachers currently teach four classes, have a class prep period, and have an assessment/case management period. Secondary SDC teachers teach five classes and have a class prep period. The District feels that the secondary RSP assessment/case management period is problematic in two ways:
The special education teams at PV and Chico High, and specifically the RSP and SDC teachers at those sites, were presented with the District’s concerns and asked to come up with a solution. Diane Olsen, Director of Student Services, came to the negotiations session on Thursday to share what has come thus far from this process. At this time, the teams at PV and Chico High are still working to come up with solutions that may or may not include sharing the assessment/case management periods between RSP and SDC teachers. There are a number of options being looked at, and Jim Hanlon emphasized that the District would much prefer a teacher-generated solution. The assessment/case management period is not in our contract, but it has been District practice for as long as thirty years, so CUTA would have a case to argue that it represents past practice. We represent the interests of all of our members, and we don’t believe that solving a problem for one group of members at the expense of another group is the best option. We are going to wait and see the results that the special education groups come up with at PV and Chico, and we will revisit this very important issue at our last negotiations session this year on May 31. Independent Study MOU Chico Unified has expanded its independent study options for our students in recent years, and we are currently operating under an MOU that dictates the caseloads for these programs. We have had the teachers working in these programs visit negotiations sessions to explore how the current caseloads are working. We have made adjustments to the caseloads for the traditional independent study program, and we are continuing to examine the caseloads for online independent study. We also heard from one of the teachers handling short term independent study for students at Bidwell and Marsh who miss 5-15 days during the school year. We plan to finalize an MOU for 2018-2019 at the final negotiations session. All-day K MOU--65 minute prep sessions We shared concerns we had with the District about how the 10 half-sessions (65 minutes each) would be delivered at all-day K sites. Some K teachers were alarmed, because they were under the impression that these sessions might be increased in number but halved in length to 30 or 35 minutes. The District assured us that unless K teachers at specific sites asked for this change, the 10 half-sessions would be delivered by prep time specialists in 65 minutes periods. AB 119 We explored adding language to the contract relating to Assembly Bill 119, which entitles CUTA to a variety of information about our members and specifies timelines for when and in what format this information will be delivered. AB 119 also gives CUTA the right to attend all new employee onboarding meetings. We are exploring what this would look like with the District. Language covering CUTA members at charter schools As a future topic for discussion, we shared our concern that our members employed at charter schools--for instance speech therapists and RSP teachers whose time is purchased from CUSD by charter schools--don’t appear to have the same contractual protections at those sites. This is a complicated issue which we will be looking at further in 2018-2019. Return rights We also spent more time discussing return rights for members who go out on leave. Specifically, we are negotiating whether or not a member has a right to return to their site and/or exact position after a leave of absence. There are various types of leave, and we need to identify which leaves have return rights and which do not, if any. We also need to determine how the length of leave impacts return rights. Thank you for support during a very positive year of negotiations. We will continue to keep you up to date with the progress of future negotiations. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association |
AuthorSMichelle Bunch serves as Vice President and Public Relations Chair for CUTA. Archives
October 2019
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