ESTA UPDATE

SITE MEETINGS

The current Collective Bargaining Agreement we have with the District expires at the end of next August. Long before that date, both ESTA and the District will share with each other their proposals for inclusion in the successor agreement. Typically, these proposals are “sunshined” by both parties at the March meeting of the school board as a prelude to formal bargaining.

The ESTA Executive Board directs the Bargaining Team, and the ESTA Assembly has an opportunity at least monthly to discuss issues relative to Bargaining. Even so, it has long been our practice to make efforts to meet face to face with our members to listen to their concerns and ideas about contract matters prior to formulating our contract proposals.

As a result, members of the ESTA Bargaining Team will visit every school site before the middle of December to meet with interested members and discuss contract matters. In addition to these twelve site meetings, we are also planning meetings with various Special Interest Groups (SIG) throughout January and early February. These SIG meetings will address such areas as: Student Advisors, Psychologists, Special Education, Athletics, Small Learning Communities, Librarians, Alternative Education, and so forth. If you have a suggestion for a particular SIG not mentioned here, email me a brief description.

Our site visitation schedule is as follows:

Site	Day	Date	Time	Location
STHS	Mon	Oct 18	3:10	Library
YBHS	Tue	Oct 19	12:22	Lounge
FHS	Mon	Oct 25	1:30	C-2
AHHS	Tue	Oct 26	3:15	Library
OGHS	Wed	Oct 27	3:00	X-1
WOHS	Thur	Oct 28	3:00	Lounge
PHHS	Thus	Nov 4	1:40	E-8
MPHS	Tue	Nov 9	3:00
JLHS	Mon	Nov 15	3:15
EVHS	Thu	Nov 18	2:15
IHS	Mon	Nov 22	3:00
SCHS	Wed	Dec 8	2:30	Library

SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

CTA and ESTA are once again announcing three separate scholarship programs of interest to members.

CTA 2005 Scholarship for Members. Five $2,000 scholarships will be awarded to CTA Members enrolled in a credentialing or degree program who show a potential for successful use of the funds.

‚ CTA 2005 Scholarship for Dependent Children. Twenty-five $2,000 scholarships will be awarded to a dependent of an active, retired, or deceased CTA member. The dependent must plan to attend an insti-tution of higher learning for a degree or credential

ƒ ESTA 2005 Scholarship for Children and Grandchildren of Members. Scholarships totaling approximately $6,000 will be awarded in furtherance of higher education to either high school seniors or current college students.

Complete details and official application forms are available from Lori or Ly at the Mt. Hamilton office by calling 272-0601. (The CTA forms are also available online at www.cta.org) The application forms will take some time to fill out, so don’t wait too long to get started. Completed CTA forms must be postmarked by February 18, 2005. The deadline for submission of the ESTA forms is March 4, 2005.

FLU SHOT CLINIC CANCELLED

Regrettably, the severe shortage of viable flu vaccine has added another casualty to the list of opportunities to get inoculated. District Risk Manager Corinne Kelsch has announced that the two-day clinic planned for early November has been cancelled.

This is certainly not the fault of the District. But one wonders where the national priorities lie when the major supplier of flu vaccine to the world’s richest nation is located offshore, and when the FDA was blind to the problems at Chiron only to have them discovered by British health authorities.

Sort of gives you the creeps when you think that there is supposed to be some huge depository of viable smallpox vaccine waiting to be distributed as soon as a terrorist group attacks us with that weapon. I wonder.

STRS SERVICE CREDIT

Just about half of all ESTA members have some fractional number of years in their STRS Service Credit. This fact is only really important when people are thinking of retiring and they find that they’re just short of some major threshold in their STRS service.

What are those thresholds? One occurs at 25.000 years of STRS service credit. Anyone who retires with that much service credit (or more) is entitled to use their highest consecutive 12 months’ compensation in the computation of their pension amount. Otherwise, if a retiree has fewer than 25 years, s/he must use the average of his/her three highest consecutive years’ pay.

Another series of thresholds occur at 30, 31, and 32 years of service credit. When teachers reach those milestones, they’ll receive either $200, $300, or $400 in career bonus pay from STRS upon retirement. Also at 30 years, STRS members can add another 0.2% to the age factor portion of their retirement formula.

These are all great gains, and all were fought for and won for us by CTA in the past five or six years. But the thresholds are all “hard floors”, meaning that if you retire with 29.994 years, STRS does not round it off to become 30.0 years.

How do you get 29.974 years? Lots of ways. Maybe you were hired on the third day of school way back when. Maybe you took an unpaid leave of absence, or ran out of sick leave, or used too many days of Personal Necessity Leave one year, or were disciplined with a day or two of unpaid leave. Or, maybe the District made a mistake that never got rectified. No matter how it happened, if the situation can’t be fixed it can be a real downer to find that you have to work summer school or partway into the next school year to earn back that missing fractional year after you had hoped to retire.

Well, CTA came though again. Among the flurry of bills that our governor signed into law last month was SB 102 (Burton), which becomes operational next January 1 (but not retroactive to previous retirees). The effect of this law will be to allow STRS members to convert up to 30 days of accumulated sick leave into “qualified service credit” when they retire, in order to reach one of those important milestones. Our current work year is 182 days. Using 30 days of unused sick leave enables you to push your “qualified service credit” up by just about 0.16 years.

So, for example, if you’ll have 30 days or more of unused sick leave and 29.840 years of STRS service credit at the end of this school year, you’ll qualify for the 30-year bonus of $200/month if you retire.

STRS SEMINARS

All ESTA members should be aware of a series of three different STRS-sponsored workshops that will be held at the Mt. Hamilton CTA office at intervals over the next few months. The seminars are intended for STRS members in three different phases of their careers:

Early Career (0 to 15 years of service) scheduled for Thursday, Dec 16, at 4:00 p.m.

‚ Mid Career (10 to 20 years of service) scheduled for Wednesday, Jan 12, 2005.

ƒ Late Career (age 50+, or 25+ years of service) scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 9, 2005

The Early Career workshop is entitled “Demystifying CalSTRS” and should be of most value to STRS members in the first dozen or so years of their careers, helping them to understand what they can and shouldn’t count on from the State Teachers Retirement System.

The Mid-Career workshop is entitled “CalSTRS Fundamentals”, and is best suited for members with a significant deposit in the STRS system but who may still have ten years or more until their projected date of retirement.

The Late Career workshop is entitled “CalSTRS Retirement Checkup” and is targeted at people who may be five years or less from finishing their public education careers.

Watch your mailbox for flyers with more details as these dates approach.

ESTA ELECTIONS

ESTA will hold elections at all comprehensive sites and Foothill on November 17 to select ESTA Site Officers (Site President and Site Vice President) plus Assembly Representatives and Local Grievance Representatives.

Nomination forms will be available for distribution for at least two weeks in the latter part of October, and must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. on Nov 17.

ESTA can only flourish with members who are willing to serve in these capacities. Sites must elect their local officers on an annual basis for one year terms which coincide with the calendar year. The need for Assembly Representatives, who serve two-year terms, varies by location. Every site in the District will need to elect at least one Assembly Rep; many need two.

Service as a Site Officer or Assembly Representative has never been more important, given the state of the District right now and our need to make critical decisions regarding contract negotiations. In addition, persons holding these positions accrue 30 hours of Professional Growth Credit for each year of service. Keep vigilant for the nomination forms. Get involved!