Friends —
Your Culver City Federation of Teachers bargaining team met again with the School District management team yesterday afternoon.
As you will recall, at our last session we said that we would step up and help CCUSD through this crisis by taking 5 unpaid furlough days next year, as we are this year.
When CCUSD responded yesterday, their initial proposal, which we rejected outright, called for BOTH 5 unpaid furlough days AND pay cuts. Their follow-up proposal, without pay cuts, calls for 8 unpaid furlough days.
Both of these are “regressive proposals,” which is a violation of collective bargaining law. CCUSD's first proposal to us (dated Nov. 5 and Jan. 13) called for pay cuts that would cost our bargaining unit, collectively, $800,000. Subsequent proposals cannot exceed that dollar amount. Since that time, they have given us three “regressive” proposals: one for 9 furlough days, one for 5 furlough days and pay cuts, and one for 8 furlough days.
All of these subsequent proposals are “worse” for our bargaining unit than their original proposal. Hence, the term “regressive.”
Rather than file another complaint with PERB (the Public Employment Relations Board), at least for now, we simply told CCUSD that we will not entertain regressive proposals. We do want to do our part, though, in helping CCUSD through this crisis. In that spirit, we made a proposal that should form the basis on an agreement. We proposed:
• Teachers (with the exception of those in our Office of Child Development program) will accept 6 unpaid furlough days, contingent on the following:
1. Elementary prep time will be increased through the use of 8 “meeting-free Wednesdays.”
2. 12 days shall be set aside for elementary conferencing.
3. Snap-back language on the furlough days shall be written if state revenues improve.
4. CCUSD shall complete an early retirement incentive analysis for 2011/2012 by 12/1/11.
5. All furlough pay deductions shall be rounded up.
6. Teachers who were “harmed” by furlough day rounding this year shall be made whole.
7. State caseload maximums for specialists and Special Ed classrooms shall be added to our collective bargaining agreement.
8. Outstanding pay inequalities in our stipend schedule shall be resolved.
(A brief note about our Office of Child Development. This program is not in financial trouble. Second, teachers in this program are the lowest paid teachers in our District. Third, closing that program for furlough days might lead community members to seek out other sources of early childhood education.)
Finally, we're doing our best to help CCUSD through this crisis. We need to see the same spirit from our School Board. There are still no significant management reductions (at last night’s meeting they were to consider approving the reduction of one month's work for each of two middle managers — saving CCUSD a whopping $14,000); they still have not thanked us publicly for taking the 5 furlough days this year; and they are still fighting with us about a furlough pay issue that is hard to believe.
When we agreed to the 5 unpaid furlough days for this year, we assumed that CCUSD would do an exact calculation and subtract 5 days pay from us. For some reason, and without checking with us, CCUSD rounded some people up and some people down to the nearest dollar amount. As a result, the furlough day deductions were not exact. Some of us “gained” 5 bucks or so each month, while others were “shorted” 5 bucks or so each month. We have proposed that CCUSD simply “make whole” those teachers who were shorted due to the rounding. After all, we're talking about PAY DEDUCTIONS that we took to help CCUSD through a crisis.
CCUSD's response: They will make whole those teachers who were harmed by the rounding, but propose to withhold the 50 or 60 bucks from those of us who “gained” from the rounding! If that strikes you as petty and unappreciative of the furlough days, then you're reacting the same way our team did.
The teams meet again on May 19. Please don't hesitate to contact me, or any member of our team (Natalie Gualtieri, Claudette Dubois, Casey Chabola, Amy Maldonado, David Mielke) if you have questions or concerns.
Thanks for your patience and your support.
Mr. Mielke, President of the Teachers Union, may be contacted at davidmielke@ccusd.org
