East Side Teachers Association/CTA/NEA 888 So. Capitol Ave San Jose, Ca 95127 December 5, 2003

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

Resignations, roster purges, and lack of nominations in the recent site elections have resulted in vacancies in site officer and/or Assembly delegate positions at five District school sites. ESTA is predicated on full representation from every site, and so the Elections Committee has determined to carry out a second round of nominations/elections in an attempt to fill the vacancies. ESTA Bylaws do not allow for a person to merely be appointed to fill the role of a site officer or Assembly Representative.

Foothill and Piedmont Hills have vacancies in the Site Vice President position; Hill, Lick, Piedmont, and Overfelt each have one vacancy in their Assembly Rep delegation. In the recent elections, most of these positions received multiple write-in candidates, but either the write-in candidate with the most votes was unwilling to accept the position, or there were too many write-ins to facilitate selection of one over the others.

All ESTA members at these five sites have been given new nomination forms to begin the makeup election process. The deadline for submitting nominations is the afternoon of Wednesday, December 17. Members may give nominations to their Site President or fax them to me at 272-7569 or email them to me by 5:00 p.m. on the deadline day.

In the simplest sense, service as either a Site Vice President or Assembly Delegate requires the office holder to attend one three-hour meeting each month. In addition, Site Vice Presidents may occasionally be asked to help out their beleaguered Site President in paper distribution, election monitoring, or at local meetings. When fulfilled, the positions confer 30 hours of Professional Growth Credit annually.

• Makes part-time workers wait two years and full-time employees wait six months before being eligible for insurance.
• Its deductibles range as high as $1,000, triple the norm.
• It refuses to pay for flu shots, eye exams, child vaccinations, chiropractic services and numerous other treatments allowed by many other companies.
• In many cases, it won't pay for treatment of pre-existing conditions in the first year of coverage.

Wal-Mart has also been accused in recent months of knowingly subcontracting janitorial services to custodial companies employing illegal aliens.

The local CSEA chapter of the Classified employees union recently published in its newsletter The Sounder an article on what appears to be its political philosophy concerning, among other things, the future of East Side Board member Craig Mann.

The CSEA Chapter certainly has a right to adopt any particular political or organizational agenda it wishes, and ESTA has no right to try to interfere. However, the Sounder article also included a statement that not only has ESTA adopted the same position, but so too has the Benevolent Alliance. Huh?

The statements are absurd and completely false. ESTA has taken absolutely no position on any current Board member. Period. With the elections for East Side school board a little less than one year away, a lot of key issues need to be determined prior to our Association taking any official position either for or against any member of the School Board.

And the Benevolent Alliance? Its Bylaws prohibit it from taking any position on any matter subject to a vote on a public ballot. It is as apolitical as an organization can be.

I happen to sit on the Board of Directors of the Benevolent Alliance of East Side Employees, and I am also on the Executive Board of the East Side Teachers Association. No school board member’s name has ever been mentioned during a single meeting of the BAESE Board. Never. And although ESTA does discuss the behavior and composition of the school board, we have not taken any position on anything to do with the next Board election. Period.

I have asked CSEA to print a factual retraction of its erroneous statements.

The Santa Clara County Service Center Council of CTA is formed and funded by CTA to carry out a variety of activities in furtherance of CTA members in the 32 school districts in this County. One of those activities is to interview candidates for both the State Legislature and the US Congress and make recommendations to membership regarding endorse-ments. Each local CTA chapter included in whole or part in the particular legislative district is then given an opportunity to support or oppose the proposed endorsement. A 60% supermajority of the affected CTA locals must agree with the endorsement in order for it to become official. The ESTA Assembly has to date concurred with the endorsements of:

ESTA has also formally endorsed former Superinten-dent Joe Coto and made a campaign donation in the amount of $3,200

In each of the last several years, the district has cobbled together some sort of supplementary employee retirement program (SERP), generally thought of as being offered to effect a reduction in payroll costs. Most recent versions have taken the form of an annuity roughly equal to 4% of a retiree’s final annual pay. It has never been totally clear whether those taking the SERP would have retired anyway, and so a minimum number of participants has been made a component of such offers for that past couple of years.

It occurred to me recently to research our current demographics from various perspectives. Here are some of the data I’ve derived for the current 1,236 members of our bargaining unit. (Because of the way that I asked for the info, ESTA members at Child Development Centers are not included in these summaries).

Number with Master’s Degrees: 436 (35.2%)

Number with Doctorate Degrees: 18 (1.4%)

Number of BUMs at 1.0 FTE: 1,159 (93.7%)

Number of BUMs at 0.8 FTE: 37 (3.0%)

Number of BUMs at 0.6 FTE: 32 (2.6%)

Number of BUMs at 0.5 FTE: 1 (0.0%)

Number of BUMs at 0.4 FTE: 4 (0.3%)

Number of BUMs at 0.2 FTE: 3 (0.2%)

Average Base Pay* of 1.0 FTE certif. staff: $66,269.30

Average Base Pay all certif staff: $64,803.40

Avg. Gross** Pay all certif. staff: $65,827.20

(number of employees in each cell)

* counts in steps 1 – 11 include fractional years less than next highest step