ESTA UPDATE

RETIREE MEDICAL

Bargaining unit members at least 55 years of age who retire from active service…and have served the District a minimum of 20 years shall receive a District-paid HMO until the retiree reaches age 65. This is language in our current contract, which will not expire until next August 31. Whether this language is included in the successor agreement is dependent upon the outcome of collective bargaining that has yet to happen, but I think it safe to say that ESTA is not likely to accept any district proposal that would result in the elimination of medical coverage for retirees.

But, there are no absolute guarantees in life, other than death.

Providing retiree medical coverage is a current expense for the district, and must certainly be factored into decisions of budget priorities. Fifteen years or so ago, retirees could count on a full range of medical coverage for themselves and their spouses, for life. Recognizing this as a significant unfunded liability, ESTA and the District negotiated a series of transitional steps that reduced this coverage level to what remains today. This was a mutually agreeable solution to a significant financial problem, yet even today there are those who accuse ESTA of having “sold them out”. While narrowing the range of medical providers, the current language still covers the retiree until the federal Medicare system takes over.

How much does it cost the District to provide this benefit? At the present time, Kaiser single subscriber rates for persons under age 65 are $276.74 per month. So each of the approximately 34 ESTA members who retired last year are costing the District $3,321 this year, for a total of around $106,300. I don’t have the exact figures, but if the “average” retiree is around 61 years old when s/he begins drawing this benefit, then one estimate for the total annual cost is around $400,000 (assuming that there are about four years’ worth of retiree groups of around 30 people each drawing the benefit in any one year).

By the way, retirees not yet 65 have some options. Each can purchase coverage for their uninsured spouses at the District rate, and/or each can apply the $276.74 district contribution to the cost of maintaining coverage in either the Blue Cross HMO or the UAS PPO. The table shows comparative costs borne by the retiree.

Monthly under-65 retiree medical options costs

Plan	plan cost	district pays	retiree pays
Kaiser: retiree only	276.74	276.74	0
Kaiser: retiree + 1	553.48	276.74	276.74
Cross: retiree only	320.31	276.74	43.57
Cross: retiree + 1	672.68	276.74	395.94
UAS: retiree only	426.06	276.74	149.32
UAS: retiree + 1	890.45	276.74	613.71

SCHOOL BOARD OFFICERS

Lan Nguyen, newest elected member of the East Side School Board, and Craig Mann, newly re-elected member, were sworn in during a brief ceremony at the December 2 meeting of the Board. Both were elected to four year terms, joining George Shirakawa, Manuel Herrera, and Patricia Martinez-Roach on the 5-person board. The seats of the continuing members of the Board will come up for election in two years.

As is its custom, the Board conducted its annual internal organization at the Dec 2 meeting, electing its officers for the coming year. Manuel Herrera was elected Board President, George Shirakawa will repeat as Board Vice President, and Patricia Martinez-Roach will become the Board Clerk. Lan Nguyen will become the rep from our Board to sit on the CSBA (California School Boards Association) Delegate Assembly.

BUDGET TASK FORCE

The first of two meetings of the group convened to study the current financial condition of the District took place in the theater of STHS on Monday, December 6. A follow-up meeting occurred at YBHS the next night. Looking and listening for hours at page after page of large numbers can become a mind numbing exercise, but Board President Manuel Herrera is to be com-mended for bringing about the first true participatory inspection of district finances in many years. We can only speculate on what the outcome might have been had such a process been employed a year ago.

If no changes come about, and no errors are uncovered, the revised “bottom line” for the District right now shows a projected ending balance plus reserve (EBPR) for the current fiscal year to be a negative $8.1 million. This represents a significant swing from the positive $5.9 million EBPR in the budget adopted last June of nearly $14 million. That discrepancy is certainly enough to get anyone’s attention.

How on earth could this happen? It is convenient and even popular to lay blame on the Coto administration, but that is much too simplistic. What became obvious at the BTF meetings was that there is plenty of blame to go around, since some of the practices alleged to have contributed to the problem occurred after Coto left and may be ongoing to this day. Interestingly, it was also revealed that two of the major budget transfers ($8.3m) recently splashed all over the news as ‘improper’ or ‘illegal’ and gleefully cited as examples of Coto incompetence, may amount to nothing. Both are pending further independent legal review at this time.

In my opinion, determining the true scope of the problem and devising proper strategies to exit whatever mess we’re in is the most important issue facing us. The only positive outcome of playing the blame game would be to ensure that faulty practices that may exist right now are identified and rectified.

BARGAINING TIMETABLE

Members of the ESTA Negotiations Team will soon have met with faculty delegations at all of the schools in the District, seeking input into needs and wants relating to the renegotiation of our contract. Still to come are a series of meetings with various special interest groups, such as counselors, advisors, psychologists, SpEd staff, and so forth. But then what?

Once done, the Negotiators have the task of distilling the many concerns and suggestions into a presentation to be made to the ESTA Executive Board. At that time the combined groups will begin to formulate the core bargaining proposals that will ultimately be presented in summary form to the school board in March. Naturally, contradictory ideas presented by membership will have to be resolved. What may seem to have been a valid proposal from a teacher at one school may be philosophically exactly opposite to the proposal from a counselor at another school. It happens often, and it is largely up to the Executive Board to determine which suggestion, if either, moves into our formal proposal set. Under our Bylaws, it is the Executive Board that has the responsibility to direct bargaining.

Who is on the E-Board? Voting members are the four ESTA Executive Officers, each Site President, and our three elected delegates to the CTA State Council. Nonvoting members are the Bargaining Team and the Chairs of all Standing Committees.

At the same March meeting of the school board that we “sunshine” our proposal, we can expect the District to do the same with its proposals. Often, this slow motion dance begins with such vague language as, “The District has an interest in making changes to Article 7”, or some similar non-specific statement.

Then, the real work begins. We can expect that the two Bargaining Teams will meet in late March or early April to agree to a series of housekeeping items such as what the proposed schedule of meetings will be, what order the proposals will be taken up, and so forth.

Many of the practices of collective bargaining are set forth in state law. It is unlawful, for example, to bargain in bad faith, or engage in retrograde bargaining, or various forms of “surface bargaining”. While “No” is a legitimate response to a proposal from the other side, saying “yes” to an issue today and “no” to the same issue next week is not.

The law limits the length of a particular collective bargaining agreement to be no more than three years. ESTA and the District have now negotiated at least five consecutive three-year contracts, including the current one, which is set to expire on next August 31. We have always agreed to begin bargaining the successor agreement prior to the expiration of the current one, and negotiations on about half of our recent contracts have been concluded prior to the end of the school year.

If full agreement on a successor contract is not reached by the end of this school year, negotiations will likely continue through the summer and, if necessary, after the opening of school in next fall. As long as bargaining is progressing, all of the terms and conditions in the current contract remain in force until replaced by a ratified successor agreement. This includes class size numbers, length of the workday, existing salary schedule and fringe benefits, and all the rest.

As progress on individual portions in the successor agreement is made, the two bargaining teams will tentatively agree (“TA”) to the mutually acceptable proposals. Throughout the bargaining process, our Executive Board will receive periodic reports from our negotiators, who will be seeking direction when needed. The ESTA Assembly may also be kept abreast of progress. It is likely that the District’s team will do the same to the superintendent and the school board.

Who knows what when is frequently a difficult series of decisions during bargaining. Certainly, it is not prudent for ESTA to widely publicize each and every proposal put forth during bargaining, or the fallback positions we may be willing to accept. ESTA has a philosophy of being as open and transparent to our members as we can be, but there will be times during contract negotiations that our membership will not know details of what’s going on. ESTA members will be asked to trust their elected and appointed leadership.

Occasionally, in instances of protracted or contentious bargaining, one side or the other will purposely engage in campaigns of disinformation as a bargaining ploy. We don’t do that, and have every reason to hope that the District won’t do it either. To the extent that we can we will keep our membership appraised of the facts and the problems we encounter. When in doubt, ask your Site President. Don’t believe or spread rumors.

As a bargaining technique it is not wise to bring outlandish proposals to the table, in a false hope that the resultant haggling will settle on a “compromise” that is what was wanted in the first place. Two can play that game, and there are rarely any winners.

The goal of bargaining is that the parties will reach a point of having TA’d all items. At that juncture, the ESTA Assembly will debate the tentative settlement and make a recommendation to membership to either ratify or not ratify the agreement. The District’s team will do the same with the Board. Ultimately, both sides must ratify the agreement for it to become the new contract. Should either party not ratify, it’s back to the bargaining table, often with new negotiators. In my memory, ESTA membership has never failed to ratify a contract proposal.

The alternative to reaching TA on all bargaining issues is for either side to officially declare that an impasse has been reached. Doing so leads to calling in a state mediator, who tries to budge one or both sides off their seemingly intractable positions. If the mediator is successful, bargaining resumes. If mediation fails, the process enters a phase known as Fact Finding.

Fact Finding is nearly always, it seems, about money. It works like this: ESTA would choose a participant, the District would choose another, and a third neutral person would be assigned by a state agency to make up the fact finding committee. The “reasonableness” of each party’s positions may be tested by comparison with similar school districts, or other benchmarks, in an official attempt to bring reason into what will likely have become a very emotional and highly polarized situation. Bargaining can continue during Fact Finding. However, if no mutually agreeable solution arises out of the Fact Finding phase, state law allows the District to impose its “last, best, and final offer.”

At this point, and not before, ESTA would become strike legal. In all of 52 years that this school district has existed, there has never been a strike. I would not personally consider it much of an accomplishment to be the first President of ESTA to preside over such a thing.