Dear SPFE Member,
Today, we met with the district in our 11th mediation session. All in all, today was fairly productive, although there were some frustrating moments. Many proposals were shared back and forth, including:
- Licensed staff interview and select
- Severance language for all three bargaining units
- Class size
- EA ASL interpreter certification and bus duty language
- Adult Basic Education MOU
- Mental Health Supports job descriptions
- Adding a July 4th holiday for EAs at Crossroads
- Discovery Club Transfer Language
- Duty Day Language
- SCSP seniority
- Building substitutes
We had a small group discussion with the district about equity leads that was positive and plan to continue discussion on this proposal next week.
We also received a response from the district on our proposal about loss of preparation time pay. Instead of paying people on 15 minutes increments like we originally proposed, the district wants to round up and down based on seven minutes increments. For example, if your preparation period was 50 minutes your time would be rounded down to 45 minutes instead of up to an hour. We all know that they’re trying to squeeze every minute of unpaid work out of us and this is just another example of that.
There was one tentative agreement on SCSP vacation time that will clarify the amount of vacation time for 10 month SCSP employees.
Frustratingly, while we were negotiating, the district started to employ scare tactics by sending out 30-day layoff notices to employees in other bargaining units—telling other district employees that in the event of a strike they will be laid off 30 days from now if we have not reached a settlement.
Management facing a strike often resorts to divisive tactics. District leaders should stop their fear mongering and start negotiating. The time they spent writing layoff notices could havebeen spent reaching agreement with educators and avoiding the strike.
We have three mediation sessions scheduled for next week — February 28, March 2, and March 4. It is important that we continue our preparations for a strike. Next week there will be training for building strike captains and strike line preparations will begin. Stay in touch with the leaders at your site for updates.
Members, family, and community members are encouraged to send letters to Joe Gothard asking him to invest in students and avoid a strike. Click here to send your letter now.
In Solidarity,
Your SPFE Bargaining Team