East Side Teachers Association/CTA/NEA 888 So. Capitol Ave San Jose, Ca 95127 October 20, 2005

Don McKell, President Ralph Giannini, Vice President and Interim Treasurer Jane Voss, Secretary

EstaPres@pacbell.net fax: (408) 272-7569 voice: (408) 272-0601 website: www.EastSideTA.org

The District has provided me with a file containing all sorts of raw data on our members. I spent a little time searching and sorting that data recently, and present some of my findings in a series of tables below. The data in the file was provided as of October 6, so very recent hires may not be included. Also, some dates of hire and some dates of birth were obviously wrong, and have been omitted from these reports.

Ever wonder which District sites play host to the oldest staff members? The table below shows all schools ranked by average age of certificated staff, as well as the ages of the youngest and oldest ESTA members at the site.

The next table counts the number of ESTA members in a succession of age brackets five years wide. It sort of looks as if there could be well over 200 retirees from our ranks in the next couple of years. What do you suppose the District will do to prepare for that possibility? How about a zero percent raise, a cap on district contributions to fringe benefits costs, and elimination of retiree medical coverage? That’ll sure draw in a boatload of fresh recruits.

What sort of experience levels to the certificated staff in the district bring to their jobs? Lots of us are in the first four years of our careers, but an average of one of us per school site has been around for more than three dozen years. Ouch!

This table ranks the number of years’ experience we have, sorted by school site. As above, it includes service in other school districts, and treats all new hires this year as having completed a full year.

This table shows the approximate distribution of current ESTA members on the certificated salary schedule. The numbers represent how many ESTA members are being paid from each cell on the salary schedule.

ESTA continues to meet with the District to negotiate the terms of a successor agreement to our now-expired contract. Until such time as bargaining is finished, and the resulting contract is ratified by both parties, we continue to work under the terms of the expired contract. Given below is the salary schedule we were paid from during last year, which is still in effect until replaced by a new one.

Around half of all ESTA members are paid out of Steps 1 through 12 on the salary schedule. The remainder are paid out of Steps 16 through 32. For each of us, the District uses a term "Salary Years" to determine which step on the salary schedule should be used to compute pay. The "salary years" of any particular employee is a combined function of:

  how long the employee has been in the district, ‚  whether or not the employee has worked something less than 100% for one or more years,

ƒ the years of contractual service the employee may have had in another school district, if any, and,

„  whether the employee began work on the first day of their first year with the district.

Due to these factors, about 50% of all ESTA members being paid out of Steps 1 through 12 have a "salary years" value that is not a whole number, like 4.87 years or 9.46 years or some other such fraction. You’ll notice that there is no Step 4.87 nor Step 9.46 on the salary schedule, and you may wonder how the pay of such a person is computed.

Well, the process does not involve rounding off. If that were the case, the teacher with 9.46 years would be paid the same as a teacher with 9.00 years. When the district proposed that solution to ESTA years ago, we didn’t accept it.

Here’s how it is done: Let’s say that "Ann" is that 9.46 year person, and use her as an example. Suppose for the sake of this illustration, Ann has 53 post-grad semester units, and is therefore in Column C of the salary schedule.

Until she reaches 12 salary years, Ann will be paid her base salary from the whole number portion of her salary years, plus 46% of the difference between the two steps bracketing her salary years.

From the salary schedule on the left, Step 9 of Column C is $64,999, and step 10 is $67,736. The difference between Steps 9 and 10 is $2,737. Thus, Ann’s salary will be $67,736 + 46% of $2,737 which equals $67,736 + $1,259.02 which equals $68,995.02.

After Ann reaches Step 12, she, like the rest of us, will not progress to the next step of the salary schedule until her salary years rounds off to at least 16. Thus, if Ann had 12.46 salary years, or 13.46, or 14.46, or 15.46 salary years, she’d be paid $73,210.

At Step 12 and below, there is no rounding off. Above Step 12, there will be rounding off. An employee with 15.73 salary years will be paid from Step 16.

By the way, the maximum number of years of outside experience that can be credited to a new hire for salary schedule augmentation is eight. Thus, a 20-year veteran in another district hired as a new teacher in East Side would be paid from Step 9 of our salary schedule.

Here are some statistics for the

average ESTA member:

She is 45.6 years of age.

She has 1.77 years of outside teaching experience.

She has been in East Side for 13.5 years.

She has 62.95 post-grad semester units.

She has gross salary earnings of $68,900 per year.

437 ESTA members have masters degrees.

25 of us have doctorate degrees.