Today is the last voting day for the Tentative Agreement between the School District and the teachers union.
Just to review here are the key money elements of the agreement:
So, based to the numbers we were working off of from the first round of negotiations:
So…
How you doing? Me, I’m great. Oh by the way, I have the skinny on the tentative agreement that will be voted on by the teachers union next week. The last day of voting will be on Thursday of next week, so hopefully we’ll have an idea if the membership was okay with this contract.
Here are the big things that are part of the contract:
So, as a commenter pointed out the other day the District released their counter proposal to AEA which did remove the PLCs like I had guessed, but had bumped their raise offer to 2.5% with the ability to reopen salary discussions in a year. So here is how the numbers pencil out again with this new information
AUSD proposal 2.5% raise |
AEA proposal 4.5% raise over two years |
|
| Year One Raise | $995,000 |
$796,000 |
| Year Two Raise | $995,000 |
$1,791,000 |
| Total | $1,990,000 |
$2,587,000 |
So the difference between the two is about $600K.
And here’s what it is if I use the rounded $1.2 million number for the two years:
AUSD proposal 2% raise |
AEA proposal 4.5% raise over two years |
|
| Year One Raise | $750,000 |
$600,000 |
| Year Two Raise | $750,000 |
$1,350,000 |
| Total | $1,500,000 |
$1,950,000 |
This difference is even smaller.
Sometimes there are just lots of little bits of news, not big enough for an entire post, but not insignificant enough not to share.
Yesterday, Susan Davis posted this bit of great news on Twitter:
Which means that, hopefully, everyone can be on their best behavior and work together to finalize a contract. As I wrote in this post, the District and AEA weren’t that far apart, number wise, but of course the District’s proposal was contingent on teachers buying into the Professional Learning Communities to get the annual $1000 stipend during the two year pilot.
In other school related news, Ruby Bridges Elementary did not meet its fundraising goal via the gospel show which would help send 100 Fifth graders to sleep away Science Camp. It fell a lot short of the needed dollars, so if you have a few bucks you can spare to help out, you can give the Ruby Bridges campus a call at 510.748.4006 to see how you can help.
All right, so my post about the contract impasse and the disputed amount of money that appears to be the cause of the impasse: the 2.5% got me thinking about what 2.5% would actually cost the school district. So given that there are some numbers in the AUSD summary, here’s what I could sort out.
But let me back up and give some context. The Teacher’s Union (AEA) requested a 4.5% raise to be split over two years, 2% for year one and 2.5% for year two. AUSD proposed a 2% raise for the first year and that raise is not a lump sum but would be kept over the next year, plus this whole Professional Learning Communities stipend.
Alright, so here will be my tortured math explanation, I’m going to ignore the starting salary bump for new teachers and the stuff about the Speech-Language stipend because it’s just confusing and doesn’t relate to existing teachers.
The district has stated that to implement the raises it will cost $1.2 million for the two years, but when they break it down by year they have it as $796,000 per year which doesn’t add up to $1.2 million, so I’m going to use the larger amount of $796,000 just to be conservative.
On Thursday afternoon, a Press Release from the School District hit email boxes everywhere which essentially detailed that the School District had made a contract offer to the Alameda Education Association (AEA aka teachers union) for their consideration.
Here are the pertinent parts of the Press Release from the School District:
The proposal offers to raise starting teacher salaries to the average of comparable school districts in Alameda County, increase overall teacher salaries by 2% and provide additional financial incentives for teachers participating in a voluntary two-year pilot program of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) aimed at improving student achievement. If this proposal is accepted by AEA, beginning teachers who participate in the pilot would see an estimated total increase of more than 6% in compensation for the next two years and most other teachers who participate in the pilot would see a total increase of more than 3% in compensation for the next two years.
…
In addition to increasing beginning teachers’ salaries and overall compensation, the proposal includes an annual incentive of $1,000 for each of the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years available to every teacher who participates in a PLC.
Yesterday the School District put out a press release indicating that the two negotiation teams — on one side the School District, the other AEA — had come to a tentative agreement on two version of the calendar for the 2013 – 2014 school year. This is terrific since last year it took forever to come to an agreement on the calendar.
So here’s how it works, there are two versions “Draft B” and “Draft C.” I don’t know if there is a preferred calendar, but these both go to the AEA membership who will then vote next week on which they would like the School Board to adopt, if all goes well, we should have a calendar by the January 15th School Board meeting. *Crossed fingers*
Here are the two options:
So…
There have been rumors circulating about endorsements for the School Board and City Council. I’ve heard a lot of variations from different sources about what actually went down, but the best I can piece it out is this way.
I’ll start first by saying, I know that the initial reaction will be to point fingers at the two easiest targets in this tale, but I’ve been contemplating how everything shakes out and honestly, for me, the biggest issue here is one of integrity on the parts of the candidates who weighed the political math and determined it was worthwhile to either pull an endorsement or not endorse at all in order to reap the rewards of a more “valuable” endorsement.
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