C.V. Educator

May 2005

Newsletter Archive

IMAGINE THIS

This is not a tale from the far side, this actually happened this year to one of our CVEA members and is currently the subject of a continuing grievance filed by the Association.

Some additional facts will help to clarify the issues. The teacher in question is a first year teacher. Questions arose regarding his certificate status in October. The state is currently investigating these issues and will eventually hand down a decision; however, the teacher currently possesses a valid certificate and a valid contract with the CVSD. The District placed the teacher on paid administrative leave in December. The”“observation” described above took place five days later. This was not the teacher’s only observation this school year. He was observed in a classroom setting in late fall and received a very favorable evaluation of his performance as were his evaluations as a coach and long term substitute teacher in previous years.

The Association filed a grievance in January. At the heart of this grievance, of course, are the circumstances surrounding the “observation” in the district administrative offices. The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and state law clearly say that observations for the purposes of evaluation are to be of “instructional activities.” The District, to my knowledge has never conducted a formal observation in this manner. Observations have always been of teachers performing in front of students in a classroom setting. This “observation” was clearly designed not to assess teaching abilities as a classroom teacher but to provide documentation for this teacher’s alleged certificate irregularities and to provide justification for the teacher’s non-renewal. This violates every principle and past practice of accepted procedures for observation and evaluation.

The grievance at the administrative level was heard in March and denied. The Association then filed the grievance at the school board level in April. It was also denied. On April 29 the teacher was given his final evaluation. He will not be retained for next year. This entire episode is an egregious corruption of the evaluation process that the Association cannot let stand without using every avenue at our disposal to rectify. The Association will file for arbitration on the observation procedures and on the final evaluation in the hopes of receiving an objective review of the District’s actions in this matter. kr

CALENDAR ISSUES or Are we really going to school until June 19 next year?

Since the school board approved the 2005-2006 calendar and it became public several weeks ago, there has been considerable discussion, numerous questions and a few accusations regarding the end of school date for next school year. First, some history may help. Prior to the 2000-2001 school year the District sent to employees several potential calendars and asked them to vote for the one they liked best. The school board considered this input in choosing the calendar but were not bound by the results. In bargaining that year the District and the Association agreed on new contract language in what has been referred to as the generic calendar. The language reads:

Since that agreement was made the District has developed the calendar using these parameters with little or no input from members. One of the driving issues that led to CVEA support of this generic calendar was a survey result that said that a majority of members do not want to start school before Labor Day. Surveys in subsequent years held the same views. There are always a few comments when the calendar is announced each spring for the following year but it has not been a big issue for the Association.

So much for the history--now here is what happened this year. When the district put together the 05-06 calendar several factors resulted in a late end of the year date. First, Labor Day was late again this year. Second, New Years Day falls on a Sunday in 2006, therefore by federal law it must be observed on Monday, January 3rd. This extends winter break by a day. These two factors when combined with the “core concepts” of the generic calendar contract language give us the Monday, June 19 last day of school.

When the District realized this they approached the Association and asked if in light of this proposed calendar, would we be interested in polling our members to see if they would be interested in moving the workday to before Labor Day weekend. The CVEA Executive Board then took a look at our recently returned bargaining survey which to the question, “Don’t start school before Labor Day,” responded, 49% Agree, 31% Disagree, 15% No Opinion.

We presented this information to the CVEA Representative Council. I recommended to the Executive Board and Rep Council that we take no position and let the District follow the contract. It seemed to me that we could not win on this. What ever we did, someone was going to be angry and the survey said that a clear majority of the survey respondents did not want to start before Labor Day. The Rep Council agreed and we passed on that information to the District.

Several things have become clear. A “good’ calendar is like beauty or obscenity--it is in the eye of the beholder and we will never have one that everyone likes.

Secondly, the Association needs to do a more detailed and specific survey on this issue. We need to find out if members want to start before Labor Day when it falls late(September 6,7). We also need to find out if members want to start after Labor Day to protect a long Labor Day weekend or to extend the summer until after Labor Day. We will do this survey before this situation occurs again and before the next bargain.

I am sure many of you are still unhappy about the 05-06 calendar and I am also sure that many of you would have been unhappy if we had started before Labor Day. I hope this helps to clarify the issue. kr

BARGAINING UPDATE

As the newsletter goes to press, the District and Association teams have met four times for a total of approximately twenty hours. Progress is being made on a number of issues and tentative agreements have been made on several. The tone has been very positive. We have been closely examining contract information compiled by the District and the CVEA comparing our contract with districts of comparable size and with our neighboring districts. The goal of finishing before school is out will require that we reach a tentative agreement by the end of May. Both teams would like to make that deadline but acknowledge that it will be difficult to accomplish.

Bargaining team members have been asked, “Why won’t you tell us what things you have agreements on?” Our policy is not to discuss with CVEA members what agreements have been reached until the tentative agreement on the entire package is ready to present for ratification. A tentative agreement on an individual issue which looks particularly good or bad, may look entirely different when compared to the entire package. Therefore, members will not see any details until the entire tentative agreement is reached and we are preparing for a ratification vote.