Capistrano strike enters 2nd week
All eyes are on Capistrano Unified, the state’s eighth largest school district, as its teachers’ strike enters into a second week today. Negotiators reported progress over the weekend but not enough to forestall a third day of picket lines.
The Orange County Register reported that teachers and school boards have reached an impasse at 100 districts in California, but Captistrano Unified, with 52,000 students, is the only one so far facing a strike. That could change Thursday, when teachers in Oakland Unified go on a one-day strike over the no-raise contract that the school board imposed after two years of negotiations. (A fact-finder recommended a 2 percent raise in 2012, but the new superintendent, Tony Smith, indicated that the district, still repaying the state for a bailout earlier in the decade, can’t afford even that.)
While many districts have negotiated a pay cut by shortening the school year, on March 31 Capistrano’s board imposed a 10.1 percent pay cut and other benefits reductions to slice more than half from the district’s $34 million deficit. Union negotiators representing 2,200 teachers have offered four conditions to end the strike, including a one-year expiration date on the pay cut and a commitment to restore the money if new revenue appears. The board has said it can’t legally bind itself to that – although it’s not clear why.
Union negotiators elsewhere will be watching how the strike goes down for guidance. But there’s been unusual ill will and turmoil in Capistrano Unified that led to a breakdown in trust. Parents and activists are going through their third effort to recall the seven trustees. The board is now conducting a search for its seventh superintendent in four years. What started as a movement by conservatives to throw out what they perceived as a fiscally reckless board and superintendent has led to a parents’ backlash to recall the reformers. So Capistrano Unified may not be predictive of what will happen in districts not poisoned by politics and instability.
But frustration among teachers is widespread, even if a state deficit is beyond each district’s control.
I find it quite clear why the board wouldn’t go along with the union’s suggestions of one-year expiration date on the pay cut and a commitment to restore the money if new revenue appears. What if next year’s budget will be worse? How can then the board commit to removing the cut next year? And if the board will get just a small fraction of additional funds, why is it obvious that every penny should immediately go to restore teacher salaries? Perhaps there were also other more deserving budget cuts? Would the union agree to supplement it with an equivalent proposal that if Capo gets LESS funding, every missing penny will be immediately deducted from teacher salaries? That seems only fair if they insist on getting every extra penny.
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Ze’ev:
This is the Orange County Register’s summary of the tentative agreement:
Imposed cut: Teachers accept nearly all of the terms of the 10.1 percent pay cut imposed by the school board in March, including furlough days, increases in health insurance costs and salary concessions.
Restoration language: The district begins restoring teacher pay upon receiving at least $1.7 million in state funding above current projections. Teachers would get 60 percent of these additional funds. First to be restored would be the furlough days that are student instructional days.
Seems reasonable compromise to me – and worth striking for.
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John: Indeed the tentative agreement seems reasonable. Yet it was unclear from your initial post that the restoration of pay will be triggered only above certain threshold, and that only 60% will go toward salaries. And I find the automatic full restoration after one year still unreasonable. Until the Governor will commit to a budget, how can the board?
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Ze’ev: The teachers’ point, I believe, was that pay cuts should not be made permanent, but negotiated. If the situation worsens, teachers would have the choice of layoffs or pay cuts.
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The “parents” in this case are close allies of the teachers union and most of their leaders were staunch supporters of the former administration (whose superintendent was James Fleming, currently under criminal prosecution for his misdeeds at Capo Unified, and whose trustees quit or were removed from office in disgrace in three elections, including one recall). The current recall effort is an attempt to obstruct and destroy any possible success by the recently elected reform board, the first board that has had a chance to implement real reforms in CUSD for twenty years. Dislodging entrenched corruption is nasty business and anyone familiar with its depths in CUSD knows that it would be messy with highly active and partisan union advocates defending their special interest turf, including the “parent” group that is glued to the hip of the union and that has tried to hijack the mantle of “constituency” in a faux grassroots effort to smear the board and turn the public mandate for reform to the current board on its head. The union and this “parent” group declared war on this board from their first meeting as a majority, before they had a chance to do one thing, and they have been incessant in their rude, disrespectful and disruptive behavior ever since, intentionally throwing the district into chaos to prevent the board from succeeding. Their teacher strike was just one of several parts of this insidious behavior and, when you red the whole story about what the board was willing to discuss and when, was entirely unjustified. Hopefully, it will backfire on the union and their “parent” supporters in the upcoming November election.
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