Dear Editor- CCFT in Tentative Agreement with CCUSD

Your CCFT bargaining team reached a tentative agreement with CCUSD Management on Tuesday afternoon, bringing the 2011-2012 negotiations to a conclusion. I’ll be forwarding on a copy of the actual agreement in a following email.

What happens next is that our union executive board must approve the agreement——-we are meeting next Tuesday at 3:45 at La Ballona———-and if approved by that group it will come out to the membership for a ratification vote. That could happen as early as Thursday of next week.

From the management side, the agreement must be approved by the CCUSD Board of Education.

Here are the highlights:

* Full school year next year——no furlough days
* Two more years of the 8 “meeting-free” wednesdays to provide elementary teachers more prep time
* Five new release days for Elementary Special Day Class teachers for IEP prep and planning
* New contract language outlining a process for Special Ed teachers and Speech/Language Specialists to address caseloads which approach the state maximums. The new language requires CCUSD to maintain caseloads within Ed Code guidelines.
* A $200,000 annual block grant for athletic stipends at CCHS
* A $5,000 annual grant to each elementary site for stipends for extra-duty assignments
* Nurses
1. New language enabling nurses to qualify for a $3,000 annual stipend for National Board Certification
2. Establishment of a nurse sub pool to cover duties when nurses are absent
3. New language providing compensation for nurses in the event that subs are not available
* The establishment of a joint Labor/Management Task Force to explore new evaluation procedures
* A one-time bonus, equal to one day’s pay, due on January 1, 2013 if tax initiatives pass in November
* Sick leave balances posted on Subfinder Website

Our team will be recommending approval of this agreement. In a tough year, these are real gains. Of course we are disappointed that CCUSD has not offered us any compensation on an ongoing basis. When we get to the table again next fall, we will encourage CCUSD to take a second look at these “bonus” dollars and work to get them added onto our salary schedule so that they are ongoing.

We also are disappointed that we were unable to get CCUSD to agree to our proposal that future health care premium increases be split 50/50 between CCUSD and bargaining unit members. We will address this again in next year’s talks.

We are also disappointed that CCUSD gave ongoing pay increases to just two employees, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources and Director of Security. You can be sure that we will remind them in next year’s talks that those of us on the front lines could use an increase as well. We will also remind them that if CCUSD wants to attract and keep the best teachers, it needs to offer competitive compensation.

But all in all, this is a good deal in a very tough year. Don’t hesitate to contact me or the other members of the team, Natalie Gualtieri and Casey Chabola at Lin Howe, if you have questions or concerns.

Finally, as we have reported before, we were relieved that we avoided layoffs this year and are happy to remind you that we’ll be paid in 11 installments next year, with our first check arriving on September 1.

Dave Meilke