July 6 Bargaining Update

HTEC Members,

Our bargaining team met with the CMO for an hour yesterday, for the CMO to present an updated comprehensive package proposal that addresses all remaining issues for a first contract.

While their proposal moved us closer to agreement, and we remain confident that a strong first contract can be reached, the CMO’s proposal fell short in several key areas. (See all proposals in the CMO's package proposal here.)
 

Employment Status & Discipline

The CMO has largely agreed with our bargaining team that the status quo system of at will employment is antiquated and cannot continue. We agree that HTEC members should serve a probationary period prior to earning the right of receiving protections against being fired without cause.

However, the CMO’s proposal still includes a probationary period that is 50-percent longer than industry standards. We believe the CMO and school directors can determine if an educator is effective within the standard two-year probationary period. 

More troubling is the CMO’s requirement that discipline and firings can only be appealed to HTH’s CEO. This creates a system where educators are attempting to enforce their rights under the contract to the very organization they believe is violating the terms of the contract. 

We do not believe this makes sense, especially given that the CMO has agreed to a neutral third party evaluating and making a binding-determination on if the contract was violated for all other disagreements. We even pointed out specific instances where the CEO has been directly involved in firing a teacher and how it would not make sense for the teacher to have to appeal directly to the person with a vested interest in the decision.

While we’re very close to agreement on both a Discipline and Employment Status article, we believe these concerns must be addressed.
 

Wages

While our bargaining team and the CMO have agreed to an updated ongoing salary schedule that includes significant pay increases moving forward, we remain apart on how a one-time bonus payment would be distributed to teachers.

The CMO updated their retention bonus offer to be $3,500 ($1,750 for part-time) for HTEC members hired before July 1, 2016 and $1,500 ($750 for part-time) for HTEC members hired after July 1, 2016 but before July 1, 2022.

We do believe this is a step in the right direction to honor the work of educators who have sacrificed their physical and mental wellbeing for their students over the past two years. Increasing the bonus for educators with more experience with the school also helps to resolve the issue of educators on the middle of the updated pay scale receiving a smaller percentage increase than those on the first few steps who received a substantial pay increase during the 2021-22 school year and remaining far behind the salaries of comparable school districts.

However, tying the payment of the bonus to an educator’s hire date doesn’t fully address our concerns about educators on the middle steps of the pay scale lagging behind other school employers. For example, a teacher hired in 2017 with 10 years of experience on the salary scale would remain both behind the pay they would receive elsewhere and only receive the smaller bonus payment. 

This solution would only resolve the comparability issue for some teachers while others would be left behind.
 

Layoffs

The CMO provided their first counter proposal for how they would determine the order of layoffs in the unlikely event that the school needs to reduce the number of employees for either economic reasons or programmatic changes.

We had previously proposed creating a joint Collective-CMO committee to determine the criteria that would be used in an open and transparent way. The CMO’s counter proposal allows them the unfettered ability to determine the criteria that they would use. 

While we may agree that a straight seniority-based system might not be the right approach for HTH to use if they needed to reduce the number of teachers they employ, we have issues with the CMO using an opaque criteria that they could determine on a whim. In the unlikely event of layoffs at HTH, all parties should know how the school is making decisions in advance.