March 16 Bargaining Update
HTEC Members,
Yesterday our bargaining team met with the CMO for a full day of contract bargaining. While we’re still far apart in many areas and no tentative agreements were reached, we did make progress on some key priorities of our members, including sick leave that rolls over from year-to-year without a cap, the ability to take personal days, and our right to be compensated for providing classroom coverage.
The CMO presented four proposals:
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Leaves
Full proposal here
The CMO’s counterproposal on leaves accepts our proposal that sick leave does not expire and can be rolled over from year to year. It also includes our proposal to allow educators to use accumulated leave for personal business; however, it is capped at two days per year (we proposed 4 days last month).
In addition, the CMO agreed to follow the public school standard of sick leave transferring to and from other school employers, protecting educators from losing any earned sick leave if they were to move to another CalSTRS employer.
While this is significant progress, the CMO’s proposal is still lacking in other areas.
For example, sick leave would accrue at a rate of 1 hour for every 30 hours worked. Accruing leave on an hours-worked basis creates a complicated and confusing process for educators tracking their available leave. Do they need to keep time cards? Are hours outside the regular work day counted towards the total? Does it mean you don’t earn credit for days you are out on leave? These were all questions the CMO wasn’t able to answer at the table and will be addressed in a future counter proposal.
While their proposal does increase the amount of leave a full-time teacher earns in a year (190 days in a school year at 8 hours a day would result in 50.67 hours of sick leave versus the status quo of 40 hours a year), it is still far below the industry standard of 10 days of leave earned in a year.
Finally, the CMO’s proposal does not allow for advanced credit of sick leave. This means that newly hired educators or those who exhausted their leave in a previous school year would not have enough hours to take a sick day until at least six weeks into the school year. Educators in this scenario wouldn’t be able to miss multiple days due to illness until roughly Thanksgiving break!
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Hours
Full proposal here
The CMO’s counterproposal on hours recognizes the need to compensate educators for covering classrooms, setting the coverage rate at $30 per hour (the CMO’s previous proposal as part of a temporary MOU separate from the contract was $22.73 per hour, while our proposal is the educator’s hourly pay rate). However, it removed the requirement from our proposal that site directors seek volunteers prior to assigning educators to cover classrooms.
The proposal partially establishes that educators would receive a 30-minute duty-free lunch break each day. Unfortunately it does so by extending the time we’re required to remain on campus to 8.5 hours, while also allowing lunch breaks to be taken away due to emergency, inclimate weather, special events or to provide lunch supervision. Some members of the CMO’s bargaining team seemed somewhat surprised when we pointed out that for elementary teachers the lack of a truly duty-free lunch means they may not have a single moment throughout the day to even use the restroom, let alone eat. With no elementary directors on the CMO's team, we realized that they might not be fully aware of what our incredible elementary colleagues are going through without appropriate breaks in their day. Our elementary bargaining reps shared the stress and burnout this can cause. It doesn’t make sense for us to extend the required amount of time on campus if we aren’t even guaranteed to receive this time to care for our most basic needs.
Regarding the work year, the CMO proposed that any educator who has not participated in Odyssey would be required to participate in up to seven additional work days prior to the start of the school year for Odyssey without any additional pay. The Odyssey is an important orientation to the culture of our schools and to our unique work. Many of us have been asked to go through it multiple times, either as facilitators or participants, and know it's a considerable amount of work. We believe requiring seven days of work without pay is just wrong, and potentially creates legal and possible CalSTRS issues due to the lack of a clearly defined work year. We questioned the legality of this, considering a scenario where a teacher might participate in these seven days of work, decide HTH is not the right fit for them, and then receive no pay. Legally we do not believe it is feasible to make these days unpaid even if we didn’t take issue with educators not being compensated for their time.
Finally, the proposal waives our collective right to bargain changing staff days to instructional days by giving the CMO sole discretion on adding up to two additional instructional days to the school year. We believe educators should have a say in changes to the instructional year.
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Temporary Salary MOU
Full proposal here
The CMO again provided the same temporary salary schedule to avoid having to pay overtime to any teacher making less than $57,200 per year, but added in one-time bonuses of $1,000 (or $500 for part-time) for those who completed last school year and an additional $1,000 (or $500 for part-time) for those who complete this school year.
While we recognize that adding in one-time payments is progress, we again expressed our frustration with having still not received a comprehensive salary proposal that could serve as a starting point for negotiating a contract. We were surprised they didn't come with one after we were so clear last meeting (and really, for months) that this is our members' top priority and how devalued folks were feeling. We appreciate a one-time expression of thanks for what we're doing (especially over the hardest years of many of our careers), but we want to see that we're valued long-term in the form of a fair salary schedule. The CMO refused to commit to providing a comprehensive salary proposal at our next bargaining session despite both sides having provided proposals on all topics that would have a fiscal impact.
We also reminded them that changes to the salary schedule that impact less than half our membership isn’t acceptable because we're committed to improving conditions for ALL of us. Besides that, it doesn’t make sense for us to waive the rights of educators to receive substantial amounts of overtime pay when many of those people are receiving just a few dollars more per paycheck as a result of the school’s unilateral and illegal change to the salary schedule.
We know the CMO can do better. Even excluding all the one-time money HTH received for returning to in-person learning, our schools have a healthy annual surplus that was budgeted at $1.8 million for this year. Our schools also have a huge reserve that is projected to be at least 25 -percent of its annual expenses when state law requires reserves to be just 3-percent.
When compared to other charter schools, HTH spends significantly less on staffing as a percentage of overall costs:
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Local schools and percentage of total expenses toward staff:
- O’Farrell Charter School: 84.2%
- Helix Charter High School: 77.5%
- Tubman Village Charter School: 75.3%
- e3 Civic High: 71.7%
- HTH: 66.9%
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California provided a 5.07% increase in per student funding for 2021-22. We’re projected to receive an additional 6% in on-going per student funding starting next year. Charter school funding and the overall health of the HTH budget is NOT what’s keeping the CMO from valuing and honoring the work we do on a daily basis. It's a matter of priorities.
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Collective Rights
Full proposal here
The CMO largely accepted many of our proposals around our Collective’s right to communicate with members and for Site Representatives to be released from duty to attend union training and meetings. However, the CMO struck our proposal to allow the Collective to release one leader a year from duty, at HTEC’s expense, to be able to work on union business. Our proposal is not out of the ordinary and can be found in both district and charter school union contracts.
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Our bargaining team presented four initial proposals on non-fiscal topics.
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Grievance Procedure
Full proposal here
Our final contract is only as strong as it can be enforced. The grievance process would outline how educators and the CMO would resolve any future disagreements on the application, meaning or intent of the contract.
The process is designed to resolve differences in a collaborative manner at the lowest level possible, but concludes with binding arbitration. Binding arbitration is when a neutral third party provided by the state hears the arguments of both sides and makes a decision on how the contract should be interpreted, and provides a remedy if it is determined the terms and conditions of the contract were violated.
The goal is to resolve all grievances before getting to arbitration, which is why our proposed process has multiple constructive, escalating steps, including mediation through the state, to be able to quickly and efficiently resolve any disagreements.
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Safety
Full proposal here
We hope all educators feel safe on campus and have non-hazardous working conditions, but we know unexpected situations occur. Our safety proposal outlines the steps to be taken when an educator encounters unsafe or hazardous conditions, including timelines for the educator to be notified of the steps being taken to resolve the issue.
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Evaluation
Full proposal here
Project-based learning is unique and special. That is why we believe that we should have an evaluation model that is specifically designed BY us and FOR us to provide constructive feedback, coaching and support for educators. We believe that in order for this to be an effective and meaningful process, we need to start from scratch in developing the system. Our proposal is that we form a committee of HTEC unit members and directors that would be tasked with designing a baseline evaluation system that makes sense for the way we work together. This baseline system would ensure we're getting feedback on how we're doing and know where we stand without limiting all of the varied collegial coaching and professional growth at our schools, allowing us to innovate and be responsive at our respective sites.
Our evaluation proposal also gives educators the right to be able to review and respond in writing to any materials being placed in their personnel files.
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Organizational Security
Full proposal here
State law requires that public employers handle paycheck deductions for dues, provide contact information for our Collective so we can reach all our members and provide time on the agenda of employee orientations to share information about HTEC. Our proposal covers the logistics of how this would occur at HTH.
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Our next bargaining sessions are scheduled for April 14 and April 28. However, contrary to what was mentioned at the last HTH board meeting, we again expressed a desire to expedite the bargaining process by placing additional dates on the calendar. We hope the CMO agrees and provides additional availability.
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The HTEC Bargaining Team
Avery Barnes, HTE Chula Vista
Hayden Gore, HTM Chula Vista
Grady Gumner, HTE Mesa
Charley Jacob, HTH North County
Jennifer Merrill, HTE Point Loma
Chris Mutter, HTH International
Chris Olivas, HTM North County
Julie Ruble, HTM Mesa
Roxanne Sepehri, HTE North County
Carly Sumrow, HTM Chula Vista
Mary Williams, HTM Point Loma
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