ESTA UPDATE

East Side Teachers Association/CTA/NEA 888 So. Capitol Ave San Jose, Ca 95127 March 27, 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

PARCEL TAX

East Side’s School Board had scheduled a special meeting on March 6 to take up the issue of whether this district should take another run at getting a Parcel Tax passed. Several school districts in this County, including San Jose Unified and Franklin-McKinley, have determined that they will proceed with their own Parcel Tax measures on a June 4 special election. However, after learning the results of a very recent voter poll, our Board opted not to meet to discuss the issue, thus becoming a non-participant in any special election. According to Superintendent Joe Coto, 61% of those voters polled would have supported a $98 parcel tax at this time; support rises to 63% if the amount drops to $75, and to 67% if the amount drops further to $50. (It takes a minimum of 2/3 voter approval to pass a Parcel Tax.) Thus, the poll showed razor thin support for the minimal amount. It should be noted that, had the Board moved forward with calling a special election for this purpose, about a third of the voters in East Side would have seen Parcel Tax issues from both East Side and Franklin-McKinley on the same ballot, almost certainly having a chilling effect on the possibilities of either being passed. Add current war jitters and a stagnant Valley economy to that. A final deciding factor was the likely cost: win or lose, the bill for conducting a special election must be borne by the entity that calls for it, and the estimate of the price from the County Registrar of Voters was a cool half-million dollars.

As a result, the earliest opportunity to place the idea of a local Parcel Tax in something other than a special election will be the statewide primary election scheduled for March, 2004.

Meanwhile, a so-called Blue Ribbon Task Force called together by County Schools Superintendent Colleen Wilcox is lethargically making headway towards the promotion of some sort of countywide "education ballot". When (or even if) that issue might actually be placed before the voters has not been decided, but if it occurs it might take the form of a special sales tax or some sort of local income tax. The task force made such little progress on this issue in the past year that several school districts, including those mentioned above, have gone ahead with their own local Parcel Tax proposals.

Surprisingly, a local income tax is far easier to pass at the polls (simple majority) than a parcel tax (2/3). In an attempt to level that playing field, a bill with CTA support will probably appear on the March ’04 ballot that would lower the threshold for voter approval of a local parcel tax to the same 55% required for local building bond elections. That’s going to be a busy election. Another long overdue ballot measure, also with CTA support, will likely appear in that election that would lower the threshold of passage of a state budget from the current 2/3 of the legislature to 55%.

TEACHER RALLY

Nearly 1,000 teachers rallied in downtown San Jose on March 20 in support of the unprecedented number of teachers who recently received layoff notices. The focus of the rally was to protest the governor’s state budget proposals calling for untargeted drastic cuts to schools, and the reaction taken by two dozen school districts to deliver layoff notices to 1,600 teachers.

CTA Vice-President elect David Sanchez was joined by both San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales and State Assemblyman Manny Diaz as speakers to the well behaved and enthusiastic crowd.

Initially, the theme of the rally was to have been that of a funeral for public education. In the wake of US military action in the Middle East which began the day before, rally organizers abandoned the funereal motif out of sensitivity and concern for families of active military personnel.

A roll call of all school districts in the County took place at the rally, with symbolic Pink Slips being dumped into a trash can (instead of a coffin) by each of the affected Chapter Presidents. Unfortunately, press coverage was not as broad as what we had hoped for, given the media preoccupation with pending military action in the Iraqi theater.

We will continue to lobby our state legislators to make decisions that place a high priority on allowing public schools to fulfill their mandate. Budget balancing can take two forms: either a decrease in expenses or an increase in revenues, or some combination. Now that the revised budget for 02/03 has been signed by the governor (with some major victories scored by CTA and other lobbies), it’s time to focus on the harder task ahead. That is, of course, the state budget for 03/04 which will likely be seeking to balance another twenty-five or thirty billion dollars. It will continue to be important for us all to keep up the campaign, making frequent contact with our state legislators to remind them that we’re still here.

ELECTION RESULTS

ESTA held districtwide elections on March 26 to choose local delegates to represent us at both CTA State Council and the NEA Representative Assembly.

The outcome of that election is summarized in the following tables.

One of the races on the ballot was to select three persons as ESTA delegates to the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association.

 

 

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The three top vote-getters were Bob Dickerson (AH), Robert Rumph (MP), and Allan Roberts (IH). Susan Zaslaw and Mary Barrett-Wong will serve as alternate delegates for one year.

The other race on the ballot was to select two persons as delegates to the CTA State Council of Education.

 

 

The two top vote-getters were incumbent Theresa Flores (ST) and Allan Roberts. ESTA’s alternate delegates will be Bob Dickerson and Rick Caton.

CAN YOU TOP THIS?

Three well-paid district employees are currently (as I write this) in the State of New York in an attempt to recruit new teachers for next year. This trip was presumably OK’d despite a much ballyhooed set of "travel restrictions" mentioned by the school board in response to anticipated budget reductions. Adding to the irony of this trip at this time are the over 1,600 teachers who are already in this County who’ve been given layoff notices by their respective districts recently. One imagines that a few of them might have been able to be recruited to make the jump to East Side?

District officials who are still in San Jose point to the source of funding for this junket as special funds that could not have been used for other expenses: sort of "use it or lose it". While that may or may not be the case in the wake of recent relaxation of restrictions to the spending of categorical funds by school districts, the recruiting trip still sends the wrong message at the wrong time. Our Bargaining Team recently heard a district proposal that we allow an increase in class size numbers in an effort to help balance the district budget for next year. The only way that an increase in class size numbers will save the district money will be by employing fewer teachers. Something just doesn’t seem right here.

One further irony: the superintendent recently issued a memo to the effect that student field trips in this district will be limited to Santa Clara County only, due to the uncertainties of possible terrorist reactions to the outbreak of war in Iraq. Complaining about the inconveniences that such an announcement may cause seems somewhat disingenuous, especially when one considers the "inconveniences" that might arise from losing students or teachers in the wake of a terrorist attack, however unlikely. But one is forced to wonder whether the three district officials in New York maybe slipped out of the state before the commencement of hostilities, or are simply considered expendable.

SPRING VACATION

March always seems to be such a long month. Luckily, our next school vacation is shortly upon us and will begin on the afternoon of Thursday, April 17 (a school board meeting night). It continues through the following week, as if you didn’t know that already.

What you may not know is that our new contract has a provision that requires us to obtain advance clearance from a site administrator if we intend to extend the vacation by taking Personal Necessity Days either immediately before or after the Spring break. If you do take such a PND without having cleared it through your boss, you won’t be paid for it. That’s serious.

In our new contract, we were able to bargain two gains in the area of PNDs. First, we now have up to 7 PNDs each year (up from 6 in the previous CBA); such days still come out of accumulated sick leave. Second, we now have 2 "no tell" PNDs each year, whereas in previous years we were supposed to clear all PND absences in advance of taking them. What the district wanted in return was a reduced substitute need on days before or after holidays or vacations.

Q: What happens if you’re legitimately ill the day before or after a holiday or vacation? A: Call the substitute service as usual, and do your best to prepare a meaningful lesson plan for your substitute(s).

For complete details on your rights and responsibilities related to absences, check Article 6 in your contract.

GOLDEN HANDSHAKE

Now there’s a phrase we haven’t heard applied to educators in a while. The statewide teacher shortage exacerbated by such educational initiatives as K-3 Class Size Reduction and 9^th grade Morgan-Hart programs pretty much did away with any state-sponsored program to make early retirement more attractive for teachers. In fact, STRS changes in the past few years have generally been geared to offering teachers various incentives to delay retirement. Well, in the words of CTA lobbyist Bill Collins, the impending state budget crisis must trump the teacher shortage card, because AB1207 is on the fast track to being signed into law "by late spring".

If enacted, AB1207 will allow school districts to again bargain with their teachers provisions to buy either two years of STRS service credit and/or two years of age credit (the latter is much more expensive in most cases) for use in the standard formula for calculating retirement payouts (but would not serve to "bump" the longevity bonus of 30, 31, or 32 years).

Adding two years to one’s STRS service credit could have the effect of increasing a retiree’s Unmodified Allowance (UA) by almost 7%. As a rough example, consider a 30-year teacher, age 58, with 150 unused sick leave days, and contract earnings of $75,000 in the last 12 months. Without GH, this person receives a UA in retirement of about $3,975/mo. With a two-year GH, this same person receives about $4,221/mo, for a 6% difference of $246/mo.

What if the same person postpones retirement for one year, getting a 0% raise and using all ten of the extra sick days? Without GH, her monthly UA would then become $4,437; with GH, it rises to $4,697.

The timing on this legislation could certainly be better. Budget planners for our district (and probably hundreds of others) have factored assumptions of a certain number or retirements this year into their projections in an attempt to get a handle on next year’s budget. Waiting to see what comes out of Sacramento on this issue may delay some teachers from declaring their intentions to retire.

Watch your mailbox for a CalSTRS flyer about a free Retirement Benefits Overview meeting set for the morning of Saturday, May 3 at the Santa Clara County Office of Education. Call (916) 229-3840 NOW to reserve a place. This one’s going to be crowded!