ESTA UPDATE

East Side Teachers Association/CTA/NEA 888 So. Capitol Ave San Jose, Ca 95127 May 6, 2003

Don McKell, President Julie Pratico, Vice Pres Carla Holtzclaw, Secretary Ralph Giannini, Treasurer

mckelld@esuhsd.org fax: (408) 272-7569 voice: (408) 272-0601 x213 website: www.EastSideTA.org

SUPPLEMENTAL EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT PLAN for 2003

By now, most ESTA members have probably heard the unexpected news about the district’s agreeing to offer a SERP this year. For those who may only have recently returned from Mars, the offer is one which is being made to Bargaining Unit Members who will:

 be a certificated employee of the district on May 8;

‚ be at least age 55 by August 31; and

ƒ have at least 20 consecutive years service in this district.

A person who meets these eligibility requirements and agrees in writing before May 23 to retire before the beginning of next school year, will have a choice of receiving either an annuity or an enrichment of retiree medical benefits. In its simplest terms, the annuity would amount to 4½ % of the retiree’s current contract salary plus degree stipends. (Thus, a top-of-the-salary schedule ESTA member with a Master’s degree would receive an annuity of about $3,815). This annuity would be paid every year for the rest of the retiree’s life.

In actuality, an eligible individual can claim the SERP merely by resigning from the district. The district does not stipulate that the individual must actually begin drawing a STRS pension in order to qualify for the SERP. Up until about age 63, the longer a healthy person puts off actually beginning to draw a STRS pension, then more it will be on a per-year basis.

There are details too lengthy to include in this Update that must be considered by potential retirees. These details include a possibility of converting the SERP to pay for extended medical benefits for the retiree and spouse, or accelerating the annuity payouts to occur in as few as five years. An informational meeting has been scheduled at the DO on Wednesday, May 14 at 4:00 p.m., and should not be missed by anyone who needs to know more.

In a memo I have seen from the DO, there are currently 201 bargaining unit members who meet the eligibility criteria of age and length of service. Thus, approximately one fourth of all eligible persons must agree to leave the district before May 23 in order for this SERP to achieve the minimum threshold of participants.

 

AB1207 GOLDEN HANDSHAKE

CTA Sacramento Lobbyist Bill Collins sent an email to CTA offices on May 6, which I excerpt here:

"Today Senate Appropriations Committee voted 11-0 over CTA objections to force an amendment making passage of Assemblywoman Corbett’s AB1207 dependent upon passage of a class size flexibility bill that CTA has already blocked.

Corbett is committed to supporting current class size law and may drop her bill if she cannot get the amendment approved. This will play itself out soon."

 

FACTORS TO CONSIDER ABOUT EARLY RETIREMENT

Retirement is a huge step for most people, and ought not to be launched without due diligence. If the recent district offer of a retirement incentive has you thinking for the first time about retiring this year, you’d better think hard about it. Then think again.

If it’s right for you, then go for it. I have yet to speak to a retiree who regrets the decision to retire.

Anyway, here are some facts (and opinions) to ponder as you examine your personal situation. I’m putting them here in no particular order, and if there are any discrepancies between the summaries I include here and legal documents such as our contract, state or federal law, or the details of the SERP, the provisions of those other documents will take precedence.

 Step and column moves on our salary schedule will not be affected by state or district budget cuts for those who remain next year. However, the possibility of a COLA-based raise in salary next year is just about zero. Income is not likely to go up anytime soon for those already at the top of the salary schedule.

‚ If you are age 55 or over and have at least twenty years’ service in this district, you already qualify for a retiree medical benefit that will cover you (no spouse or dependents) when you retire until you are 65. You will have to convert to Kaiser or pay the difference if the plan you select costs more. [see † below]

ƒ If you have 30 years STRS credit and you retire, you’ll get an additional $2,400 "longevity bonus" each year from STRS. If you have 31 years, it’ll be $3,600 and if you have 32 or more years, it’ll be $4,800.

„ Unless they are already 63 or older, folks who retire before they have 30.000 years of STRS credit can take a huge hit in their STRS pension, not only because they miss out on the longevity bonus, but also because they’ll lose the 0.2% "career factor".

… The longer you work, the more you’ll get as a STRS pension when you retire. In very rough numbers, each additional year you work between ages 55 and 60 will add at least another $4,000 to your eventual annual STRS unmodified allowance.

† The cost to the district of paying a pre-Medicare retiree’s Kaiser coverage next year will be about $2,850. If the retiree has a spouse without access to a group medical benefit, the retiree will likely have to enroll the spouse and pay a similar amount to Kaiser out of pocket. If there are also dependents that need to be covered, the family Kaiser rate will be about $8,000. The district contribution of $2,850 (for the retiree only) will leave the retiree with a spouse and dependents with payments of about $5,176. These rates are a 14% increase over this year’s rates.

‡ If a retiree moves out of the Kaiser coverage area or chooses to enroll in a different medical plan, the district will only contribute about $2,850 towards a year’s cost of retiree medical insurance during the first year.

HIPPA COMPLIANCE

The 1996 federal legislation known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has phased in over several years. The "Portability" aspect of the law provides, among other things, that an individual who has been continuously covered under a health insurance policy and who then changes carriers cannot be denied coverage for what might be considered pre-existing conditions by the new insurer.

The "Accountability" aspect of the law is more troublesome. The intent was and is to safeguard individuals’ medical records and to constrain agencies that accumulate those records from disseminating them without the individual’s consent. Under the law, employers, providers, and insurance companies are denied the ability to transmit sensitive patient records to one another (or to some other party) without the expressed written permission of the patient.

Sounds OK, right? But a few examples of where this now becomes troublesome are:

 when a district employee seeks the assistance of the District Benefits Coordinator in solving a billing problem between a medical services provider and an insurance company.

‚ when an employee needs to be examined by a district-selected physician to determine issues relating to return-to-work fitness after an extended illness.

These and other instances will now require that the patient (or parent or guardian) sign a waiver that grants permission for the selected release of information. Without the waiver: no information can legally be transmitted. ESTA members may be asked to pre-sign such waivers in the near future as a hedge against obtaining speedier assistance from Benefits. One does not have to sign the waiver, but refusal to do so will inhibit the ability of the district to act on your behalf, and will slow down the process of assistance should you need it.

ESTA 2003 SAFETY SURVEY

I will present the report of our 2003 Safety Survey to the ESTA Assembly on May 7 and the School Board on May 8. Any member who wants a copy of the 8 page report can get one by asking me for it.

In summary:  We are still concerned about uneven application of discipline and a perceived lowering of consequences for student misbehavior. ‚ We still feel as if we are kept out of the loop for being informed about our students who have committed suspendable or expellable offenses, but overall we feel that we hear about local incidents of violence more quickly and honestly. ƒ Most of us still cannot lock our classroom doors from the inside. „ Threats of violence and vandalism are less prevalent. … We feel better trained.

The survey is unchanged over the past three years and so we can identify trends at each site (except EVHS, which took the survey for the first time this year).

All participating district sites except three show an improvement in perceptions of site safety from last year to this year. The exceptions are EVHS (with no prior year comparison), and STHS and SCHS. Even with no prior year comparison, EVHS stands out as the site at which faculty seems to be the least secure in their perceptions of safety. And amazingly, our newest state of the art high school seems to have been built with doors that cannot be locked from the inside.

 

SPECIAL EDUCATION AUDIT

Several months ago, our School Board contracted with an external accounting firm by the name of Harvey M. Rose to conduct audits of key district programs. The first of those audits was focused on Special Education (SE) and has now been completed. The report is over 100 pages – too lengthy to completely summarize here. However, some key points made in the audit are:

 

Yes, I rearranged the order of these last few items so that they would appear in a more, shall we say, ironic context.

WHAT IS A PREPARATION?

Our contract (Article 14.6) states that if any member is to be assigned more than two preparations next year, the reasons must be explained prior to making the assignment. Moreover, "the District shall make every effort to assign bargaining unit members no more than three preparations unless agreed to by the member." We have a lot of time and money invested into getting clarification of just what in means for the district to "make every effort".

So, just what is a preparation? ESTA has long held that the presence of any one of the following conditions as it applies to a teacher’s regular interaction with students constitutes a "preparation" for the purposes of this section. The teacher:

 has to take attendance; or

‚ has to assign grades; or

ƒ is required to present a lesson to an entire group; or

„ cannot exclude without paperwork a specific student from the meeting for disciplinary purposes; or

… has students assigned with a particular computer course code.

Thus, an algebra class is a preparation, but not a math club meeting or an informal after-class tutorial session. ESTA believes that a classic "Homeroom" falls under the definition of a preparation. In addition, it’s entirely possible to have two preparations in a single hour, as is the case when, for example, Spanish II and Spanish III students may be mixed in one class and they use different books. The use of different books can usually be an indication of different preparations, as might be the case when a teacher is assigned a "regular" Algebra I class one period and a Sheltered Algebra I class another period. That’s two preps.