by Don McKell

A great amount of passion and spirit have been generated in the past few weeks on the topic of whether ESTA members should vote to ratify the proposed settlement offer, or turn it down and go back to the drawing board. Members at school sites have engaged in conversations. Floods of emails have been sent. Meetings have been held.

Next Wednesday, membership will have an opportunity to vote on the matter by secret ballot. And I hope that ESTA members follow the recommendation of the ESTA Assembly and vote to ratify the proposal. We’ll all be better off for it.

On a visceral level, I think we need to ratify this contract so we can get on with the rest of the things that we need to do. Our former superintendent, by either adept skill or abject lack of it, began a process that will take a very long time to resolve itself. The past few years have been characterized by chaos, discord, distrust, the pointing of fingers and the laying of blame. My feeling is that we are through the worst, and that reaching accord on the proposed settlement will allow us to focus more of our considerable energies on our jobs.

And on a logical level, it is a pretty darned good settlement offer, all things considered. Buried in all the passionate rhetoric of late are the facts that East Side has spent more money than it has taken in for at least the past five years. Our school district has burned through a comfortable reserve and nearly all of the windfall land sales money available to it. It is a distraction to try to find someone to blame that on, except to analyze what got us here and try to avoid perpetuating the mistakes.

The contract proposal allows for a soft landing. While providing for a 3.58% increase in compensation levels this year, and something on the order of a 4½ % increase next year, the COLA-2% portion ought to give district management the wherewithal to halt the pattern of deficit spending and begin a recovery to a restoration of a modest reserve, as is required by law.

Accepting an offer that withholds three years’ worth of 2% chunks in the effective COLA is a bitter pill to swallow, and not one person is happy at the prospect. But in my opinion it is not too different than choosing to gently apply the brakes to a speeding car instead of not doing so and slamming into a stone wall. Not hitting that wall leaves the car able to resume speed at some point

Had it not been for the lucky breaks leading to a $17m cushion from the sales of land, East Side would either be in State receivership today or so totally changed from the ordinary as to be virtually unrecognizable. We got a small taste of those possibilities for change last year. Counselors: decimated. Advisors: gone. Librarians: gone. Athletics: gone. Classes: bursting. Non-mandated programs: wiped out. Classified staff: crippled. Safety: an illusion.

As an aside from the main conversation we should be having: Our school board certainly picked the worst possible time to make changes in the title and compensation of the district’s chief executive officer, and that’s a fact. Their action and its timing speak volumes to their disconnect from our levels of existence and a woeful lack of sensitivity. But it doesn’t change what is on the table and it shouldn’t influence our vote. As Chief Human Relations Officer, Bob Nunez earned about $140k. His salary remained the same for several months after becoming the Acting Superintendent. Last August, he was named Interim Superintendent and was compensated at a level of $175k for the added responsibilities. On February 9, on a 4-to-1 vote the Board named him to be the Superintendent, signed him to an 18-month contract, gave him a new list of goals and objectives against which his performance will be evaluated, and agreed to pay him $200k.

Is he worth it? Who knows? Superintendents of much smaller school districts in this valley earn $175k, and both Joe Coto and Esperanza Zendejas were earning $225k when they individually sailed off into the sunset. Is this a 14% raise? Yes, and no. It’s certainly 14% more than he was set to earn before, but the expectations now being placed upon him are greater. Go ahead and get angry about this. I sure was. But don’t use it as an excuse to vote "no".

Instead, ask yourself what we stand to lose if we fail to ratify? Stability, tranquility, and cohesiveness, among other things. And, potentially, some terrific contract language gains.

Last year, an ESTA member suddenly passed away during the year. It happened the year before and the year before, too. The spouse and dependents of those members, in the midst of the grieving process, found that the paid medical benefits they had been relying upon for years were terminated at the end of the month in which the employee died. This new contract includes language, if ratified, extending fringe benefits in cases like this for six months.

Every year, one or more of our members has a legitimate family emergency that requires them to take time off from work to care for a loved one. Under our old contract, only a maximum of seven of those days were paid, even if the employee had oodles of accrued sick leave. The new contract, if ratified, will allow up to 12 weeks’ paid leave in similar circumstances for members with sufficient sick leave days stored up.

If ratified, veteran teachers with ten or more years in the district will qualify for performance evaluation cycles of five years, instead of the current two. If ratified, the district’s obligation to notify classroom teachers of dangerous students placed in our midst will be more clearly specified. If ratified, the scope of authority of site-based decision teams will be more clearly defined, further eroding the age-old tendency of absolute top-down management that seems to be the hallmark of insecure or disorganized administration.

If ratified, the new contract will erase the anachronistic method of allocating students, balancing, and paying overages in PE classes. In this respect, PE will henceforth be treated no differently than every other department. The new contract will also clarify our ability to use district email for Association purposes, will make a small reduction in the number of severely disabled students that can be assigned to certain SpEd classes, and specify reassignment rights in the wake of future layoffs. In addition, the new contract will more clearly define the notion of "exceptional circumstances" and prohibit the unilateral suspension of class size language.

You may dismiss these accomplishments as minor, but each represents long hours of bargaining and steps in the right direction. And we risk losing them if we fail to ratify.

We didn’t get full COLA. We didn’t get across-the-board reductions in class size, or even focused reductions in high-need departments like PE, Science, or English. Next time.

Admittedly, there is also a cloud over fringe benefits for the first time ever. It turned out to be one of the district’s "lines in the sand" from which we could not budge them. For whatever reason (and I suspect is has much to do with the residual financial scrutiny of the County Office of Education as a vestige of the Zendejas "Era of Uncertainty") the district felt it needed to bring back an agreement that placed a limit on its obligations to pay whatever increases might come our way in benefits costs. Our negotiators were able to win significant concessions from the district’s initial position on benefits costs, but could not shake the resolve of the district to see some sort of cap.

Will the average costs of our health and welfare benefits rise by more than 15% next year? Most indicators say "no", but the truth is it’s not impossible. We’ll have a much clearer idea in a couple of months as the vendor renewal bids firm up.

So, should we wait until we know what each of the renewal costs will be before we hold the vote? I think not. How many of us have the resolve and the stamina to continue in this state of apprehension and uncertainty for two or more additional months? I think most of us would just as soon get this over with, one way or the other. If we ratify, and if average benefits costs rise by more than 15% next year, then bargaining will reopen and be narrowly confined to the area of compensation and benefits.

And if we don’t ratify, there is certainly no assurance that the district’s position in the area of benefits costs can be changed by further negotiation. Under the law, when collective bargaining reaches impasse (as it likely would in the event of rejection of this settlement proposal) a series of events is initiated that can lead to the school district having the authority to unilaterally impose its last, best offer. If that were to happen, ESTA would have the authority to strike. I’ve heard talk from a few ESTA members that they’d welcome such a turn of events, but history shows that any gains from a strike are dearly paid for.

First and foremost, you’d need to gain an additional 1% salary raise for each two days you’re out on strike, or you lose money. Next, you’d need to fortify our lunch tables to deal with the residual feelings that haunt striking Associations for years. Third, and more chilling, is the prospect that the County would not certify any contract agreement that couldn’t be shown to leave the district in a position to pay its bills for the foreseeable future. Even with the three-year 2% COLA reduction, there’s some reason to doubt the solvency of East Side over the long haul, but without it we stand to lose so much more.

No, we need to ratify this thing now, and get busy organizing for a school board election in November and contract talks in another two years.