San Benito High School District trustees received a proposal for teacher contract negotiations, looked at their migrant student population and reviewed changes to field trip regulations as part of a regularly scheduled meeting Wednesday.
The collective bargaining agreement between the district and the San Benito High School Teachers’ Association expired June 30. State law requires bargaining units, including this teachers’ association and the district, to “sunshine proposals,” or submit them at a public meeting so that community members have the opportunity to comment.
The teachers’ association bargaining unit asked to negotiate clauses about the agreement, hours of employment, grievance procedures, class size, wages, health and welfare benefits, re-openers and term in their sunshine proposal.
Math teacher Debbie Fisher spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting and asked the district to spend more of its larger budget this year on teachers.
“The way we made it through the recent difficult fiscal years was through transparency, teamwork and open communication,” Fisher said. “Now we are in a time of great financial change and we must continue to be transparent and to share our understandings of how this new financial system works.”
Fisher expressed concern that the school district had an increased budget in the prior school year – thanks to the new Local Control Funding Formula which went into affect starting last school year – and that 76 percent of the budget was spent on people while 24 percent was spent on “other costs.” This was a departure from prior spending habits in the district, when 80 to 85 percent of the budget was spent on staff, she said.
Staff and trustees were not allowed to respond to Fisher’s comments as she spoke during the public comment period of the meeting.
Here’s a quick look at other topics discussed at the meeting:
Examining migrant student population
Trustees took a cursory glance at the Migrant Education Program and welcomed aboard new Migrant Specialist Irene Bailey.
The district designed the program to help migrant children meet state academic standards so they can graduate from high school and pursue their post-secondary goals.
Superintendent John Perales asked for more of a profile on the migrant student population so trustees could get an understanding of the academic performance of these students and what qualifies them as “migrant.”
Perales was especially surprised to see only 50 of the program’s 402 students – or about 12 percent of the program – carried a GPA of 3.5 or above, he said.
“To me, that’s low,” he said, noting that he wants to see how this percentage compares with other groups of students.
Trustee Bill Tiffany asked why there were 402 students in the program this school year compared with 574 in the 2011-12 school year.
Bailey and Director of Education Services Cindi Krokower clarified fewer students in the district are migratory and added that the requirements for classification as “migrant” have become more stringent in recent years.
The migrant program had an annual budget of $612,191 last school year, which was used at the district’s San Benito High School and San Andreas Continuation High School. The budget for this school year has not yet been released.
Bailey will present a second presentation profiling the migrant student population at the regularly scheduled board meeting Dec. 10.
Waterproofing field trip regulations
The administrative regulation governing school-sponsored field trips was revised to include more detailed requirements for trips involving boats.
Changes to the regulations included that a certified staff member must obtain a Certificate of Insurance for at least $1,000,000 naming the district as an additional insured; staff must insist students, chaperones and boat personnel run the required emergency drills; and staff must assign adult chaperones to specific students. This was an informational report, so no trustees voted.
“I’m just curious: How often do we have trips involving watercraft?,” Tiffany said.
“Not often,” Krokower said, who explained the district is considering a senior class dinner and dance cruise this year.
The same administrative regulation also included changed language, which explained that field trips requiring approval from the board of trustees must be submitted 60 days – an increase from the previously required four weeks – prior to the trip.
