The president of the Assn. of Classified Employees said this afternoon that her union presented an opening proposal to the School District last Monday, the first negotiating volley in an effort to settle the now five-week old dispute over unionizing the El Marino Language School’s 20 adjuncts.
The six-person union team, led by Debbie Hamme, met for about an hour with a District group headed by Human Resources Director Leslie Lockhart.
The School Board, the pivotal agency in this community-wide flareup, heard the plan on Tuesday night in closed session before its regularly scheduled meeting.
“All I know now about the proposal,” Ms. Hamme told the newspaper, “is that the Board is meeting with their legal counsel to see whether they have a legal obligation to negotiate.”
The union leader said she did not feel any differently afterward than before, neither optimistic nor pessimistic.
“We have given them a fair proposal that does not threaten the ALLEM (Advocates for Learning Language, El Marino) program,” Ms. Hamme said. “It protects the positions of all the existing adjuncts and it is totally affordable.”
She is expecting the School District to respond by the end of next week, although the School Board is not due to make a definitive statement until after its April 10 community study session – in the heart of Election Day.
