strike vote and lawsuits

The Latest from one Ramona Teacher

Are teachers going on strike?

Is the district being sued?

Why haven’t teachers given up anything before?

How is the district paying for lawyers, subs, etc.?

How is this going to affect our kids?

There is still so much talk around town (and pretty far out of town as well) about the battle between the Ramona Teachers Union and the Ramona School District.  Union leaders keep asking teachers to speak up about the things they know and feel.  Since more than 700 people have read my three latest blogs, I guess this is how I’m fulfilling that request.  So here are the updates from my own perspective, and the answers to the questions I’ve heard asked the most.

1) Are teachers going on strike?   Today at Ramona High school teachers gathered to take a “strike authorization vote.”  This is not a vote to go on strike.  It’s just the next step in that direction.  If the vote passes with a 50% +1 majority then the teachers essentially give the union negotiation team the right to call a strike IF all the teachers will support it and WHEN it would be beneficial to the teachers to do so.  The teachers have already been told that a strike will not happen this school year, because it would only hurt teachers more and wouldn’t really negatively impact the district (since their monies have already been collected for the year).  If the vote passes (and we’ll all know by 5:00 tomorrow night) it is possible that teachers may strike at the beginning of next school year or sometime in the fall.   

     2) Is the district being sued?  Well, not sued exactly, but there is some significant legal action in the works.  I’m not going to pretend to understand the legal terms, but I think I have the gist of what’s going on.  Lately there have been lawyers and spokespeople from the California Teachers Association visiting all the school sites to answer our questions and this is what I’ve gathered:

There is both a short term and long term court action currently in place.  The short term one, which will go to a judge and be decided upon within the next two weeks, has to do with the ways and amount of imposition the district is taking from everyone’s paycheck.   RTA is trying to get the courts to vote on an injunction that would halt the drastic May cuts based on these reasons:   

1 - The district can’t impose an agreement because the two parties didn’t actually agree on anything.  They can impose cuts, but only up to 25% of any ONE paycheck.  The way Ramona’s imposition is worded requires the 2012-2013 pay decrease to be taken out in only two paychecks.  This means most teachers will lose between 50 - 80% of May and June’s pay, which is way more than the legal 25%.

2 - In order for money to be taken out retroactively in the first place, there has to be a court hearing that proves that the employee is in fact making too much money.  No legal person has proved that teachers make too much money, so there really should not be money taken out retroactively.  

3 - In any business where money does have to be taken out retroactively, apparently the law stipulates that the company has to sit down with each individual employee and work out how that money will be paid.  No one has sat down with me to decide how my $6,000 will be paid, which might very well be illegal.  

The long term legal action is being filed with PERB, the Public Employee Relations Board.  RTA filed a complaint with them months ago when they felt like the school district wasn’t practicing “good faith bargaining.”  A month or so ago PERB actually responded in favor of RTA’s complaint which warrants a full blown legal investigation to how the district has gone about making these decisions.  From what I gather this is a huge case with lots of factors.  The court will be looking into things like misrepresented money, the refusal by the district to really negotiate at all over the last year, the forced imposition, the refusal to include contingency language (in the case of Ramona getting a lot of money from Prop 30 for instance), and in general the way things have or haven’t been handled by the district.  One of the huge things talked about lately is a HUGE amount of money that was purposely kept off the records in the fact finding hearing.  Apparently there was thousands and thousands of unreported money leading us teachers to think, “ok then, how accurate is the fact finding report anyway?” So Ramona will be in a legal hearing in the fall whether or not the current injunction goes through.  

3) Why haven’t teachers given up anything before?

A lot of people think that teachers are just being selfish by not taking the pay cut.  It’s very frustrating to hear this because teachers really have been willing to take cuts, several times in fact, over several years.  Some teachers reminded me today, for instance, that way back in 2008 teachers offered to take 4 furlough days and the district said it wasn’t enough.  They didn’t take the days, or any cuts that year even though they wouldn’t have had a fight over it.  Over the past 18 months negotiators have met over and over again with the district and every single time the union presented proposals that included significant teacher cuts.  Every single time the district wouldn’t accept it and wouldn’t budge at all from their drastic numbers.  According to the negotiating team the district actually made a comment back in the fall to the effect of, “we have to do these meetings now so that we have time to impose by the end of the year.”  It seems that they’ve wanted an imposition all along.  

4) How is the district paying for lawyers, subs, etc.?  With the General Fund.  The district is paying thousands of dollars on lawyers, advisors, sub training, letters home, ads in the paper, all kinds of things.  Did you know they have hired a strike coordinator who has been coming to meetings including the fact finding hearing?  There is serious dough being spent here and it will come directly out the money that is supposed to be spent on our schools.  Much of the RTA lawyers and stuff comes from the union dues that members all over California pay.

5) How is this going to affect our kids?  

Isn’t this the most important question?  It’s also the hardest to answer.

Right now I think the biggest effect is on the spirits of the teachers.  I’d like to be able to say that this stuff doesn’t impact our classroom behavior at all.  But how can I say that?  We are teachers, true, but we are also human.  We are tired and worn out.  It is very, very hard to put forth your best effort when you know you aren’t even getting a paycheck at the end of the month.  Lots of teachers are feeling bullied.  For instance one teacher this week was “unfriended” by the district facebook page by asking a simple question in her comments.  I had no idea that people from the district are being paid to censure and even delete comments on their facebook page.  Don’t they have something better to do?  Also, several teachers can’t figure out what will exactly happen with our paycheck (the numbers are very confusing) and payroll seems too overwhelmed to meet with people personally.  When teachers feel this way their love for their job dampens and I can guarantee that the end of this school year will be significantly less festive than any before.  Not to mention we teachers are broke.  Who do you think pays for the mother’s day gifts, Olympic banners, classroom parties??? Teachers do, and right now teachers don’t have any money.

      I think this stuff will affect the schools in the long run too.  I know of some teachers putting in to leave the district.  I’ve heard subs  and student teachers say that they would never work in Ramona with the way both the district and some of the community treat the staff.  Once the pay cuts go into effect Ramona teachers will make less money than anyone else in the county (with the exception of some of San Diego City employees--but they have major retirement bonuses and have 20/1 class sizes).  Why in the world would quality teachers come up the hill to work in a school that pays so little?  I honestly don’t know what the district will look like in 10 to 20 years, but it could be scary.   

So that’s it for now.  I’m looking forward to blogging about more uplifting things in the future, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a chance to report on a teacher victory for once.  In the meantime, Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all those wonderful teachers out there!