This is the San Diego Unified School District’s fourth Negotiations Update about what is happening during bargaining sessions with SDEA. We send or post updates on the web soon after each session (www.sandi.net/negotiations). The fourth negotiations session between the district and SDEA was held on Thursday, November 13, 2008.

SDEA Acknowledges Budget Crisis
SDEA acknowledged the state financial crisis and stated that information from the Legislative Assistant’s Office already suggests that we can expect deficits through 2014. The parties shared and agreed to continue to share economic news from a variety of sources available to each.

SDEA Explains 32 elements of Initial Proposal and Presents 3 Written Proposals

SDEA has opened 18 Contract Articles and 8 Appendices encompassing more than100 separate issues. During this negotiations session, SDEA explained 32 of their conceptual initial bargaining proposals in the areas of Hours and Working Conditions and provided the district with 3 written proposals. While explaining the conceptual proposals, SDEA stated that the detailed written proposals would be developed around these concepts, which the district takes as a signal that the detailed proposals do not yet exist.

• Compensation Increases. SDEA provided a chart that they stated illustrated that the District’s budget priorities had not been at the classroom level. The chart reviewed general fund salary increases based upon the district’s unaudited actuals for 2005-06 and 2007-08 compared with the 2008-09 budget. Although the methodology itself is questionable, the point was that the board had given priority to classified instructional, support and office technical staff when directing budgeted dollars, as a percentage, into salaries. A “re-prioritization” of budget would remove the dollars from classified staff and redirect it to teacher salaries.
  
  
• Hours. No written proposals were provided in this area. All twelve of the conceptual proposals included requests for increases in unit member compensation. The proposals were based upon a concept that unit members have a “full plate” of work, which already cannot be accomplished in the 6 hour and 35 minute work day and that they should get “overtime” compensation for work that is required beyond that defined work day. In addition, they propose that a negotiated process be developed to evaluate any and all new requirements to determine if the requirements consume additional time so that either an old requirement of the job be removed or overtime compensation added. Similar proposals have occurred in previous contract negotiations. Included in the elements of this proposal were: providing time or compensation for: all work over 40 hours in a week; IEP preparation, preschool intake forms and other non-classroom work; Standards-based Report Card preparation, benchmark assessments and similar work; teachers of combination classes (in the form of additional prep time); non-classroom unit members (in the form of structured prep time) and; unit members who must use Encore and/or Zangle software. There were other proposals that would also cost additional money. The district can only “guestimate” the costs involved at this time because the proposals lack enough specificity for accurate cost projections, but, based on what is known, the “guestimates” are already projecting into the possible tens to hundreds million ranges. These proposals come as the district prepares for dramatic budget reductions.
  
  
• Retirement. SDEA provided a written proposal for a Supplementary Early Retirement Incentive (SERP). The proposal includes the levels of retirement benefit to be explored and excludes all other bargaining units. The proposal stipulated that the program must save at least $500,000 to be implemented and that all savings be applied to the teacher salary schedules.
  
  
• Working Conditions. SDEA explained 18 initial conceptual bargaining proposals regarding working conditions issues and offered two (2) written proposals.
  • Evaluation Cycle. SDEA provided a written proposal. SDEA described unit member evaluation as part of the “full plate” problem because the teacher evaluation process takes up some teacher time (meeting with the supervisor, etc). For this reason, they propose that the district adopt a 5-year evaluation cycle, where the law allows, so that some unit members will be evaluated only twice every ten years.
    
    
  • Emergency Classroom Coverage. SDEA provided a written proposal that would require a unit member’s pro-rata daily rate of pay (instead of the current substitute teacher hourly pay) for every hour over two hours of emergency coverage that a unit member must perform during an academic year. SDEA stated that, while the problem of occasionally not having enough substitutes is difficult if not impossible to solve in its own right, the higher pay rate would at least compensate the teacher for the burden of the extra students or extra class in a better way.
    
    
  • Class Size. SDEA explained the conceptual proposals to expand class size reduction in elementary schools while acknowledging that this is an enormous cost proposal. SDEA stated that the “conversation” must begin in these negotiations. This conversation would be simultaneous with conversations over potentially enormous budget reductions.
    
    
  • Caseload Allocation to Workload Allocations. SDEA explained proposals to convert the current caseload allocations for special education teachers, nurses, psychologists, speech and language pathologists, counselors and others. SDEA did say that this might be a difficult and expensive task which might be implemented over a five-year period. This proposal represents another proposal that would require substantial additional funds.
    
    
  • Safety and Security. SDEA explained proposals for increasing safety and security on campuses that suggested bargaining staffing levels for other bargaining units. Again, the proposal is an additional cost proposal with no regard for the fact that the district will be required to identify major budget reductions over the next twelve months and into the future.
    
    

The above is not an exhaustive list of the proposals that SDEA shared. There were a few additional proposals, but only a few of the 32 conceptual proposals did not include additional cost and more than a few include elements that represent enormous additional cost.

Ground Rules
SDEA presented a ground rules counterproposal that again calls for “open bargaining,” transparency and accountability. The new counter proposal did reduce the number of thirty (30) members attending sessions to twenty (20) and limited the number of sessions for such attendance to ten sessions. The district’s counterproposal rejected “open bargaining” as SDEA proposed. The district inquired about the webcast proposal for open bargaining. SDEA said that the idea still has some merit but that they have some concerns that go beyond the cost and location that would be involved.

The District’s Negotiations Team
Deberie Gomez informed SDEA that the district’s negotiating team would no longer have a School Improvement Officer due to the heavy demands of the everyday work on their time. The team is now:

Sam Wong, Chief Human Resources Officer
Tim Asfazadour, Certificated Staffing Administrator
Ami Shackelford, Director Financial Services
Deberie Gomez, Labor Relations Consultant
Jonathan Pearl, Attorney/p>

SDEA announced that Dick Gale left SDEA for a new position with CTA and was no longer a part of their team. The team is now:

Steve Kaplan, SDEA Field Organizer
Craig Leedham, SDEA Field Organizer
John Anella, Program Monitoring Department
Marc Capitelli, SDEA Vice President
Bill Freeman, Porter Elementary School
Meghann Hughes, Kearny High School
Shari Wood-Valenzuela, Franklin Elementary School

Next Session
The next session is currently scheduled for December 10, 2008.