Your Association Bargaining Team met with the district’s attorney and four administrators to begin negotiating the 2011-12 contract. Some issues have already been resolved, yet there are two major issues that the district is so far unwilling to move on:
1. Fairness for Charter Teachers: The District has proposed a contract that would create three classes of teachers in Orcutt; those who work in the non-charter schools, those who work in the charter schools and had permanence in the non-charter schools, and those who were hired directly into the charter schools. Under the District’s plan, two teachers could work next door to each other and have drastically different rights for dismissal and layoff. One would have the right to an independent review for either action, the other could be fired for virtually any reason, and fired at the end of the year for no reason at all and with no right of return. We are one group of teachers, teaching one community of students, and we should all have equal rights under our contract and under law.
2. Smaller class sizes: The Association has proposed to make class sizes smaller, or to compensate teachers when the District wants the flexibility to keep a class larger. Over two days of bargaining, the District’s attorney has refused to make a counterproposal other than “no.” At one point, attorney David Larsen called the teachers of Orcutt “spoiled,” despite the fact that the student-to-teacher ratio in Orcutt is higher than any elementary district in the county. Higher than Santa Maria-Bonita.
In the coming weeks, Association leaders and CTA staff will be in your buildings to talk about the facts in this bargain and what you can do to get a fair settlement in these negotiations.
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