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
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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 Hello colleagues,
I've attached a copy of the tentative agreement between CUTA and the District that has resulted from this year's negotiations. We will hold a general membership meeting on Wednesday, May 29, from 3:30-4:00 p.m. Voting will be from 4:00-5:00 p.m. The site is still to be determined. Voting will continue from 5:20-8:00 p.m. at the CUTA office at 819 E 5th Avenue. Any members are welcome to stay and help count the votes. Thank you! Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association Hello colleagues,
Your CUTA bargaining team and the District concluded negotiations on Thursday, May 5, with a final review of this year’s tentative agreement (TA), which is scheduled for your vote on Wednesday, May 29. The voting site is still to be determined. We will hold a general membership meeting from 3:30-4 p.m., and voting will run from 4-5 p.m. Your CUTA team will then return to the CUTA office at 819 E 5th Avenue, and voting will continue from 5:20-8 p.m. Any member is welcome to stay and help count the ballots. The general contents of the TA are listed below, and members can ask any questions at the general membership meeting. We will also email out a final draft of the TA in the coming days.
In addition, we discussed several ongoing issues. One issue we touched on was the prep period, or lack thereof, for some of our members who work with our most challenging students. If the nature of certain classrooms is such that the District and the member determine that the teacher really can’t send the students out for a prep period, then the teacher works through his or her prep and is paid 6/5ths. There was some concern that a couple of teachers of some of these very challenging classes were going to have a scheduled prep next year when the teachers felt that the students couldn’t really handle going out into other classes. The District assured us that the process is to try to schedule a prep in the master schedule and then to work as a team to decide if it would be appropriate or not to send those students out to other classes. Simply scheduling the prep period in the master schedule isn’t the final step in the process. It’s quite possible that, after review, it will be determined by the team that a prep isn’t really feasible, and the teachers would then be paid 6/5ths. We also discussed the Career Technical Student Organization (CSTO). There are a number of teachers whose work is funded through grants, and there is a significant amount of work beyond the school day. The District only provides stipends for up to three positions at each high school to compensate teachers for the work outside of the school day (for example, traveling for multiple days to competitions), but there are more than three teachers completing work outside of the school day. The outside work is required to receive the grant, but some teachers are not being compensated. The District agreed that this program has grown significantly, and they have agreed to discuss ways in which all participating teachers are compensated. This may be through grant money directly instead of through stipends. In any event, this is a topic we will continue to work on with the District. We have received permission from the District to schedule STRS retirement trainings as options during the District-wide staff development days next year. Our goal is to schedule two trainings on October 15, 2019, and two more trainings on February 11, 2020. These are the “menu” DWSDs, when members have a selection of options to choose from. One training will be focused on teachers in the middle of their careers, and the other training will focus on teachers towards the end of their careers. We are also going to try to schedule a STRS training for new hires on June 11, which is one of the new hire summer training days. The District has been very agreeable to providing these valuable trainings to our members on District time, and we appreciate their cooperation. Lastly, CUTA is proposing a small dues increase this year with the addition of a formula in which dues increase when the salary schedule increases. The proposed dues increase using the new formula would $0.76/month next year and $1.08/month the following year. The wage increases we have negotiated have increased CUTA costs, and this formula would allow us to continue to provide the time and resources towards future work. In addition to the formula, this proposal would create three “bands” or levels for the percentage of dues members pay. The description below will also be on the ballots. Proposed Dues Formula: The proposed dues formula uses a three-year rolling average based on salary schedule increases. For example, if this dues formula were in place, over the last three years the salary schedule has increased 0% (2016-17), 2.46% (2017-2018), and 6.98% (2018-2019). That is a three-year rolling average of 3.15%. If this formula is approved by you this year, our dues increase next year (2019-2020) would be $0.76 per month. Based on our projected raise next year, the three-year rolling average for 2020-2021 (the two previous years 2.46%, 6.98% and 3.5% projected) would be approximately 4.31%, which would translate to a dues increase in 2020-21 of $1.08 per month. In addition, this dues formula will adopt the same dues categories that CTA uses. Currently CTA dues are broken into three categories based on FTE: Category 1 for members whose assignment is more than 60% (full dues), Category 2 for members whose assignment is more than 1/3 but not more than 60% (50% dues) and Category 3 for members whose assignment is 1/3 or less or on unpaid leave (25% dues). Dues increase votes must occur at school sites. CUTA site representatives will bring ballots to your sites and ask you to vote on this between Friday, May 17, and Thursday, May 23. After the ballots have been delivered to the CUTA office by 4 p.m. on May 23, any member is welcome to help count ballots or oversee the counting process. This is a separate vote from the TA. As mentioned above, the TA vote will be on Wednesday, May 29. This has been another positive year of negotiations with the District. Next year will bring new challenges as we come to the end of our three year wage agreement. The projected raise for next year, the final year of our agreement, is 3.5%. CUTA appreciates your support as we work to improve the working conditions for you and make this the best school district we can for our students. If you’d like to look at our contract, you can find it here. 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, April 24. We spent the majority of the session reviewing the agreements we reached this year to put in a tentative agreement (TA) for you to vote on. The vote will take place in late May after a general membership meeting. Details about the time and location of the vote will be forthcoming. The following includes a brief summary of the items in the tentative agreement (TA).
In addition to completing the draft of the tentative agreement, we reviewed and agreed to continue our current MOUs (memorandums of understanding) with some changes. Our current MOUs with brief explanations are listed below. MOUs are approved by E-Board and only become a part of the contract if agreed on by the District and CUTA and voted on by general membership in a TA.
We had a little bit of time left to check in on issues we are currently negotiating. The District expects the report on its special education program to be finished by early May, which will hopefully allow us to spend time during our final two sessions discussing the many issues we are trying to address in this area. The District has agreed to include STRS trainings on the District-wide staff development days. STRS trainers will tailor presentation for young educators, mid-career educators and veteran educators and may provide information for additional, sensible investment options. We are trying to work out the best times to offer these training sessions, and the District is being very gracious in sharing their time to allow these presentations. We are also looking to provide STRS training for brand new teachers, and again the District has offered us time at one of the new teacher training days in the summer. This is a great example of the District accommodating CUTA member needs, because they want the best for our members, too. Next year is the final year of our three-year wage increase agreement with the District. We have begun preliminary discussions about what a compensation increase might look like in 2020-2021. Although we have no way of predicting future state funding, we can start to examine various ways to offer compensation increases. This is the start of a long discussion. In addition to the general membership meeting and vote on this year’s TA, we will also be holding site level votes on a formula to use for a dues increase. Our president, Kevin Moretti, sent an email explaining the formula CUTA would like to establish for dues increases. The formula would result in a very small increase of $0.76 per month next year for full-time teachers and an increase the following year of a little over $1 per month. For a detailed explanation, please see Kevin’s email. The dues increase would allow CUTA members working on union issues to continue to devote the necessary time for working closely with the District on working conditions, compensation increases, and other issues. If you would like to view our current contract, you can find it here. 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, April 11. We have three remaining bargaining sessions this school year, and we are beginning to put together a tentative agreement for you to vote on in late May. In addition, we are reviewing all of our current MOUs to adjust and renew as needed. We also continued to discuss issues related to all-day K, special education, long-term independent study, medical benefits for retirees in special circumstances, bargaining release time, CUTA trainings at District-wide staff development days, coaching stipends, and MAA. We opened the session by sharing the specific feedback we received from all-day K teachers at the meeting we held in January. The District listened closely to the K teachers concerns about the training of aides. They have ideas about how to get the aides more training in classroom management and other important skills. We also shared some teachers’ concerns with the age-appropriateness of the prep lessons being provided, while recognizing that the District has control over what is delivered during prep time. We also shared that one site did not get to choose whether or not the all-day schedule would have a delayed start. The District is in full agreement that the default position is a two-week delayed start for the all-day schedule and that all teachers and admin would have to agree to start the schedule earlier. This MOU will govern all-day K next year, and we will begin writing contract language during 2019-2020. We have been discussing how to clarify the process by which special education teachers can get support based on both caseload and class size. We have also expressed an interest in establishing class sizes for RSP teachers. These discussions are on hold until the District receives a report on the special education program from School Services of California. Once that report has reached a final draft stage, we will continue our conversation. We are also trying to clarify the procedures for how the state can grant the District a waiver to increase an RSP teacher’s caseload from 28-32. We have received conflicting information from the California Department of Education. We have been told that the RSP teacher must agree to the waiver by one expert, and we have been told that the RSP teacher can register their disagreement on the waiver form but the District can get the waiver anyway. We are exploring the issue further so that we can be sure that we are following the law. We are still working on the details of the long-term independent study MOU, focusing on caseload numbers. CUTA shared an interest with the District to allow members to receive retiree health benefits from the District if they resign from teaching and meet contractual age and length of service requirements for receiving retiree health benefits, but are not yet drawing STRS benefits. Our current contract language states that a member who has been with the District at least 10 years, is 55 or over, and “qualif[ies] and [is] in the process of receiving retirement benefits” from STRS will receive health care benefits from the District until the member is eligible for Medicare. We can imagine occasional situations in which members might want to resign from teaching but not yet be ready to begin drawing STRS benefits for financial reasons. With tight parameters, this could be a net savings for the District and benefit a member in this somewhat unique situation. The District is running numbers on various scenarios and they are also considering the philosophical question of whether it is right to pay benefits to someone who no longer works for the District and may actually be employed elsewhere. We are also checking to see whether SISC would allow this. This is a scenario that is unlikely to impact many members, but it could help some. A recent court case upheld the position that school districts have to cover the costs for a “reasonable” amount of time for union negotiations teams to meet and prepare for bargaining. Since the word “reasonable” is undefined, we are working with the District to come to an agreement on a specific number to add to the contract. Next, we moved on to a discussion of the menu of options available to staff on District-wide staff development days. CUTA offered to provide a training class on STRS, and the District has expressed an interest. We are working on the possibility of offering a STRS training session on the District-wide day on the first day back after the summer and potentially again at one of the later District-wide days, as well. The District has agreed to add a stipended position for a girls wrestling coach. It will be a varsity coach position in category 3 in the contract. Lastly, we discussed the MAA program. Currently, there is no MAA funding coming into the District, but it may resume at some point in the future. Our contract says that eligible MAA reporters who are CUTA members will receive 50% of CUTA’s portion of MAA dollars. The District wants to find out if those members would rather use that money for program needs, perhaps by working on committees to choose specific, potentially large-dollar items. CUTA will discuss the District’s ideas with eligible MAA reporters. Our CUTA president, Kevin Moretti, sent out an important email yesterday. CUTA will hold a vote this year on a very small dues increase. The proposed dues increase for next year is $0.76 per month. CUTA has not raised dues for more than eight years. During that time, we have negotiated nearly 20% in raises along with negotiating countless smaller items with the goal of improving your working conditions. The small dues increase will allow us to continue to provide the support you deserve. We are proposing a formula that would link very small dues increases to raises. Kevin’s email explains it very well. Please take the time to read his email. Our bylaws state that any vote on an increase in dues must take place at the site level. If you would like to look at our contact, you can find it here. 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, 3/27/19. We discussed a wide range of ongoing topics including District student admission policies, member attendance at District-wide staff development days, elementary assessment, long-term independent study, coaching stipends, providing work for suspended students, and medical benefits for retirees not yet receiving benefits from STRS. It was a productive session. The District began the session by following up on CUTA’s question about District policy regarding the entry of new students into a class. They confirmed their initial thoughts from our last session. By law, homeless students must be enrolled and admitted to class “on the spot.” For all other students, the District policy is to encourage parents to bring their child to school on the day following enrollment so that the teacher can be notified and given advance warning. However, in the event that parents insist that their child be enrolled immediately, the District will grant the parent request. In the vast majority of cases, teachers will receive advance notice of a new student being enrolled in their class. We then looked at data on member attendance at the District-wide staff development day (DWSD) on January 15. Contractually, members are docked ¼ day if they don’t attend a DWSD, provided they aren’t sick or excused by their administrator. The District was relatively pleased by the data, which showed an attendance rate of approximately 90%. In the event that a member shows habitual non-attendance at DWSDs, an administrator may have a conversation with that member. For our next topic, we returned to elementary assessment. We have been encouraging the District to find a way to minimize the impact of elementary assessment on classroom instruction, and it has been a challenge, since many teachers have indicated that they value the majority of the existing assessments. In fact, nearly 80 of our TK-2 teachers responded to a survey (out of 125 total TK-2 teachers). Even the three least popular assessments were supported by over 60% of the respondents. The District and elementary DLC have worked hard on this. They are going to eliminate the requirement for the 3rd math I-Ready diagnostic and they are going to make CBMs no longer mandatory. In addition, the District and the elementary DLC are in the process of designing a reading assessment continuum which, in theory, should reduce the overall number of assessments needed to be administered. Basically, students would take reading assessments in order of complexity until they demonstrated mastery on each assessment, and at that point, teachers would no longer be responsible for re-administering a mastered assessment to that child. Currently, students have to continue to be assessed during testing windows on assessments they have already mastered. This would eliminate the need for mandatory baseline assessment every year, and it would allow teachers to assess the students at their appropriate level, rather than having to deliver every assessment to every student during every testing window. The District is confident that they can provide clear data sheets showing where each student is to make organization more manageable. A plan like this could mean that an intermediate teacher might find themselves responsible for administering a test they are unfamiliar with, but the District feels confident that by eliminating CBMs, sites will free up more support for intermediate teachers who need help administering unfamiliar assessments. This conceptual plan is not complete, but the District and elementary DLC will continue to work on it in the hopes that it will serve our students better and make assessment more manageable for elementary teachers. At some point, elementary members will see presentations about this idea from DLC members. We are still working out the details of the long term independent study programs offered by the District. Currently, caseloads for these programs are governed by MOUs, which we need to adjust and re-negotiate annually. We have continued to gather information from our members teaching in these programs, and our discussions with the District are ongoing. On another front, the District is willing in principle to add a stipended coaching position for girls wrestling. In theory, it would fall under category 3 of head varsity coaching stipends. Although the District is avoiding adding any new costs at this time, they recognize the growth of this sport at Chico High, and they also don’t want to run afoul of Title IX. They are going to explore the situation further, but they are responding positively to this idea. Our last major topic of discussion revolved around how and when teachers provide work to suspended students. With the Board policy changing from teachers “may” provide work to suspended students to teachers “shall” provide work to suspended students, we have been working on a way to make this work for students and teachers. The District plans to propose to the School Board a similar concept to what we have discussed in negotiations. In this policy proposal, teachers have two choices. The teacher may provide the student the work at the time of the suspension and expect the work when the student returns, or the teacher may choose not to provide work and the school will provide packet work. In the latter case, the teacher cannot hold the suspended student responsible for assignments missed while on suspension because the teacher declined to provide the work. However, the teacher may require the suspended student to take any assessments that he or she missed upon return from suspension. As the District works through the challenges of allowing Chromebook access at ISS, it should be easier for teachers to provide students work. If you’d like to look over our contract, you can find it here. Thank you for taking the time to stay informed. Charlie Snyder Bargaining Chair Chico Unified Teachers Association |
AuthorSMary Schoenthaler serves as Vice President and Public Relations Chair for CUTA. Archives
April 2021
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