May 11 Bargaining Update

HTEC Members,

Making our work at HTH sustainable has been a core part of our bargaining platform from day one.

Hours

(See Full CMO Proposal)

We know, as educators, that guaranteeing a 30-minute lunch break is important for us in order to practice self-care and ensure our basic life necessities are taken care of each day we work. It's also a fundamental protection that all workers should receive.

Unfortunately, in yesterday’s bargaining session with the CMO, we again received a counterproposal on hours that does not guarantee that basic right of a lunch break. The CMO’s proposal would again require that teachers forgo a lunch break one day a week and lose additional days of a lunch break for inclement weather and scheduled special events such as SLCs or Presentations of Learning.

This is simply not acceptable. Our bargaining team again raised the issue of the CMO’s proposal, which results in elementary teachers receiving no opportunity to even use the restroom for at least 20-percent of the week. We pointed out that a teacher could face a week where they are scheduled for lunch supervision on Monday, rain on Tuesday and Wednesday and then special events later in the week, eliminating their lunches for the whole week.

This is not sustainable and significantly contributes to burnout, especially for our elementary school educators who are not guaranteed a break throughout the entire school day to use the restroom or eat.

The CMO’s hours proposal also fell short in other ways. Specifically, it again gives them the unilateral discretion to increase the length of the school year without any input from our members. 

The proposal also requires newer educators to work seven additional days for no pay in order to participate in Odyssey. The CMO argued that Odyssey is “a benefit to the employee” with great food and as a result they think they do not need to provide pay for those work days. We pointed out that attending Odyssey results in additional child care, gas, and other costs for the educator. Goodwill and great food doesn’t pay our bills and our time is valuable. The CMO should honor that by paying members for every day they work.

Tentative Agreement: Organizational Security

Assignments and Transfers

(See full proposals: CMO Proposal and HTEC Counterproposal)

The CMO’s counterproposal agrees to a transparent process for HTEC members to apply for vacant positions that exists throughout all 16 HTH schools. It also accepts our proposal that members who aren’t selected for a position be notified in writing of the reasons why they weren’t selected. 

However, the CMO’s proposal did not agree to guaranteeing a minimum posting period for vacant positions, which we proposed to ensure all members have the ability to apply for vacant positions. Their concern with this proposal is that they have ongoing vacancies that never close. The proposal also attempts to exclude the transfer process from the grievance procedures, leaving no recourse for us should the CMO not follow the contract.

We quickly provided a counter proposal that addresses their concerns around posting times by allowing them to keep them open indefinitely if a vacancy remains open with only a minimum standard of 10 days. We also acknowledged that the process allows site directors to choose who is selected for a vacant position and limits grievances to only situations where the process wasn’t followed correctly.

Collective Rights

(See Full CMO Proposal)

The Collective Rights section of the contract details how our union is able to conduct union business. The CMO largely accepted our previous proposal but rejected our proposal that our union be able to pay for the cost of releasing a union leader to focus on union business.

The CMO argued that they would not have the ability to staff a school if they had to hold a position for a member out on union release, nor would they be able to operate with uncertainties if we would exercise the right to release a leader. We pointed out that other charter schools and districts smaller than HTH have been able to work out the logistics of this type of leave. 

We even offered to add in deadlines for notification of us choosing to exercise this right and submitting schedules in advance if we chose to only release the person part time. As a bargaining team, we believe in the value of having a union leader who has time built into their schedule to work with the CMO on our shared values, and we hope the CMO will consider this in the future.