East Side Teachers Association/CTA/NEA 888 So. Capitol Ave San Jose, Ca 95127 January 10, 2006

Don McKell, President Ralph Giannini, Vice President Jane Voss, Secretary Bernadette Salgarino, Treasurer

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

Almost two years ago, CTA contacted me to request a copy of ESTA’s current Bylaws. It is the practice of CTA to review the Bylaws of all chapters in the state at intervals, to check for compliance with any changes in CTA philosophy. ESTA’s Bylaws had not undergone a significant revision in way more than ten years.

Bylaws are the rules that govern our activity as a CTA chapter. As such, they are pretty important documents, since they spell out in detail the powers, responsibilities, and privileges of members and leadership. I sent our current Bylaws to CTA, which began a lengthy give-and-take process of revision. After several iterations, we finally have CTA’s blessing that our Bylaws are in total compliance with its guidelines.

Now, however, we must begin the process locally. No proposed revision of our Bylaws – not a single word – is officially incorporated into our Bylaws until three things happen: One, the ESTA Assembly must consider any proposed changes. Two, the complete draft Bylaws must be made available to all ESTA members for a period of at least ten working days. Three, the ESTA Assembly must vote to adopt the new Bylaws (at a separate meeting than the one at which they were first reviewed) by a minimum of 2/3 of the voters present. If so much as one word in the draft Bylaws is changed at any point in this process, the whole process begins again.

Doesn’t that sound like fun?

The complexity of our situation is illustrated by the fact that our current Bylaws are 16 pages long, but the draft revisions grew to some 30 pages. Why so long? First, the draft includes a lot of strikeout language that will disappear when finally adopted. Second, CTA’s current philosophy is that each chapter’s entire election procedures must now be included within the Bylaws. Prior to the draft revision, ESTA maintained a separate document specifying our Election Procedures.

A special ESTA Bylaws Revision Committee will meet at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, Jan 23, at the Mt. Hamilton CTA office. Any ESTA member is welcome to join us. Also, any ESTA member may request a copy of the draft revision of our Bylaws and offer comments or suggestions for further revisions. If you’d like a copy of the draft revisions, please contact me by phone or email.

CTA uses an involved multi-level process when selecting which candidates for political office, if any, should receive our endorsement. Generally, the more local the political contest being decided, the more locally concentrated the endorsement process is.

In the case of school board elections, it is up to the local CTA chapter to initiate and manage its own process for makings decisions about endorsement of candidates. Once the local chapter has made a decision, it can apply to CTA for funding (in the sub $5,000 range) to apply to the campaigns of the chosen candidates. Local chapters, like ESTA, that have duly-registered Political Action Committees (PACs) can also expend local PAC money to further the campaigns of its chosen candidates.

In the case of State Assembly and State Senate elections, the process is more complicated due primarily to the fact that most state senate and state assembly districts span multiple school districts and therefore may be of interest to numerous local chapters. In the upcoming June primary and later in the November general election, there will be wide open races in AD24, AD28, and SD10. I say "wide open" because the current occupants of those State Senate and Assembly seats will be termed out, and the candidates seeking to fill those seats will not be enjoying the advantages of being incumbents.

When this happens, the CTA Service Center Council that covers the majority of the senate or assembly district will launch an endorsement process. This process typically involves contacting each declared candidate and inviting that person to attend an interview of a panel of CTA members drawn from the chapters within that assembly or senate district. Candidates who decline or fail to appear for the interview generally do not progress much further in the endorsement process.

Those who are interviewed provide a basis during that interview for the committee to make a recommendation. That recommendation is then brought back to each CTA chapter with at least one school in the senate or assembly district for approval. If enough of the chapters having an interest in the election agree with the PAC’s recom-mendation, the endorsement is then brought to the CTA Board of Directors for final approval. (If the chapters do not agree in sufficient numbers with the candidate choice of the of the Service Center Council’s PAC, the endorsement goes nowhere).

If candidates for office are incumbents, such as former Superintendent and State Assemblyman Joe Coto will be, the PAC interview may not need to happen. In such cases, the politician’s voting record during their past term in office is subject to scrutiny and in many ways reveals more about a person than an interview would. In any case, the Service Center Council PAC will contact each CTA chapter with at least one school in the senate or assembly district for approval of its recommendation to endorse a "friendly incumbent". As above, if insufficient numbers of such chapters agree with the recommendation for endorsement, the interview process would begin.

If you would like to be considered for inclusion on one of the interview panels for candidates for either AD24, AD28, or SD 10, contact me or ESTA PAC Chair Jerry Dyer at Silver Creek by January 23.

Our contract spells out a three-stage grievance process. Level 1 is the site level. If a matter cannot be decided to the member’s satisfaction at the site, the grievance rises to Level 2. This is the stage at which District Office management becomes involved, typically the Director of Human Resources. If the HR Director cannot broker a solution to the problem, the matter is then presented to a "Level 2 Panel", a group composed of two administrators and two ESTA members. That Panel hears arguments and examines supporting documentation, then votes upon the validity of the assertion of contract violations, occasionally making recommendations to one or both parties in the dispute.

If the result at Level 2 is not acceptable to the grievant, ESTA must then decide whether to take the matter to Level 3: binding arbitration. For a variety of reasons, taking a grievance to Level 3 requires the approval of the ESTA Assembly. Level 3 can be a lengthy and expensive pathway, but can ultimately lead to paying a neutral administrative law judge to render a ruling that is binding (and possibly precedent-setting) on all parties.

Levels 1 and 2 of the grievance process have very tight timelines. Level 3, due to the involvement of the ESTA Assembly and an outside arbitrator, can be protracted.

Any ESTA member can file a grievance; some have more experience at the process than others. All sites have a Building President; some also have an ESTA Grievance Representative to assist members with grievances. Beyond that, ESTA is fortunate to have the services of our Grievance Chair, Larry Scharsch. Larry generally becomes involved in any grievance that rises to Level 2.

● Special Education teachers from at least one district site were presented with a sign-in sheet at a required training meeting. The text at the top of the sheet carried wording stating that persons signing the sheet promised to implement certain of the activities that would be discussed at the training session. Thus, teachers wishing to indicate they had attended the session could not do so without also certifying their acceptance of whatever the topics of the training might cover. A grievance was filed at Level 2 on the practice, citing a unilateral change in working conditions in violation of Articles 1, 22, and 23. The District agreed (1) to halt use of the offending sign-in sheet immediately, (2) to remove the offending language from sign-in sheets that had already been used, and (3) to inform those individuals who had signed-in on the offending sheets that their signatures were now simply evidence of having attended the training session.

● ESTA became aware that the District had contracted with a private business to carry out a portion of our bargaining unit work. In addition, the business was given space in the form of three portables to conduct its activities. Specifically, the district placed up to 28 students with special needs in a non-public school, taught by teachers who were neither ESTA members nor district employees, on the OGHS campus. Investigation showed that the pupils are carried in SASI as East Side students, apparently not generating ADA, but utilizing district and OG resources. The matter initially came to our attention after a series of serious disciplinary situations involving some of the attending students. In once instance, an ESTA member was caught up in a melee and received a face full of police pepper spray as authorities mobilized to quell the disturbance.

ESTA filed a grievance in the matter, citing violations of Articles 1, 2, 18, 22, and 31 of the contract. Final resolution of the grievance is still pending.

● After numerous complaints by several ESTA members regarding the number of SpEd students placed in their non-SpEd classes, we undertook a careful study of the scope of the problem. ESTA certainly has no bias at all against children with special needs, but we do have contract language (Article 29) in which the district agrees to attempt to place no more than four SpEd students in any one RegEd class, and no more than ten SpEd students total in all five daily classes of any RegEd teacher. That language was bargained years ago, representing a mutual recognition between ESTA and the District that significant numbers of SpEd students in mainstream classes, especially when no adult aide is provided, can pose safety, learning and control problems.

Our investigation has revealed no identifiable follow-through by the District to make the agreed-to effort at balancing the number of SpEd students in mainstream classes. As one might expect, we found a notable concentration of apparent violations in the classes of elective-type departments: Visual and Performing Arts, Homemaking, and Industrial Education.

ESTA has filed a grievance at Level 2 citing violations of Articles 1, 15, 22, and 29 of the contract. Final resolution of the grievance is pending.

An ESTA member recently noted that he was not being paid by the District for having a Masters Degree. When brought to the attention of ESTA Grievance Chair Larry Scharsch, further digging revealed that our member had never been paid for the Masters, even though it had been earned some seven years ago. Scharsch was able to work with Cathy Giammona in HR to set the situation right, and our member will receive a significant holiday bonus this year.

There are a few different ways that a person might not be paid for a Masters (currently $1,470 per year). One is that the District never knew about it; it’s up to each of us to make sure that our post-grad units and degrees are officially brought to the District’s attention Another is that the Masters is from some internet diploma mill and it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Yet another is that a mistake was made by someone in HR and the legitimate degree never got recorded in the right data base.

A means of checking is that every month’s pay warrant is accompanied by an explanatory pay stub that shows each source of income, each amount withheld, and each voluntary deduction. Everyone should periodically check his or her pay stub, because mistakes happen. Every number has a meaning.

Most regularly-occurring compensation (that which is covered by Appendices A or C in the contract) is transmitted in the end-of-the-month pay warrant, like: regular salary; department chair, added instructional duty or degree stipends, or advisor, nurse, and head counselor stipends, and so forth. It can be confusing to determine the accuracy, especially for those who elect to be paid twelfly instead of tenthly, but it can be worth the effort. If it’s too much trouble, get someone to help.

Most extra-duty compensation (Appendix B) is paid in the tenth-of-the-month checks. This would include pay for workshops and period substituting. Coaching pay is meted out three times per school, roughly at end of each sports season. Class size overage payments are generally made on the tenth of the month following the end of the appropriate semester.