Three-year deal headed to vote by educators and Board of
Trustees
The News to You
With federal money being funneled back to the district, the
district will be able to hire more teachers to reduce classroom
sizes. Although only temporary, the additional teachers will spread
the students out into other classrooms.
The federal money will increase the school’s overall curriculum
by 16 sections, according to the teachers’ association. At the
beginning of the year, teachers reported some academic classes with
as many as 40 students.
After declaring an impasse in contract negotiations a few months
ago, the San Benito High School District and the San Benito High
School Teachers Association have agreed on a tentative three-year
agreement that would expand the working year for teachers.
The tentative agreement would re-establish two professional
development days, allow teachers to take two consecutive personal
necessity days without a reason and would give the teachers the
right to negotiate raises in the next two school years.
Three-year deal headed to vote by educators and Board of Trustees
The News to You
With federal money being funneled back to the district, the district will be able to hire more teachers to reduce classroom sizes. Although only temporary, the additional teachers will spread the students out into other classrooms.
The federal money will increase the school’s overall curriculum by 16 sections, according to the teachers’ association. At the beginning of the year, teachers reported some academic classes with as many as 40 students.
After declaring an impasse in contract negotiations a few months ago, the San Benito High School District and the San Benito High School Teachers Association have agreed on a tentative three-year agreement that would expand the working year for teachers.
The tentative agreement would re-establish two professional development days, allow teachers to take two consecutive personal necessity days without a reason and would give the teachers the right to negotiate raises in the next two school years.
The agreement would hold off reductions and re-establish cuts made to the teachers’ salaries, San Benito High School District Superintendent Stan Rose said.
“The agreement essentially has the effect of holding the reductions,” he said. “We were able to reduce the amount of reductions.”
Teachers voted on the agreement throughout the week, and soon afterward the school board will review the document. Rose expects and hopes the contract will be approved soon. The teachers’ vote was not completed before press time.
“We hope that it will – we are very hopeful,” Rose said. “But everyone has the right to vote.”
The contract would bring the school district some stability, and allow the teachers and school officials to work on other things, Rose said.
“It will free everyone up,” he said.
The agreement comes after a contentious negotiation that was declared at an impasse in October. Negotiations stalled when the district asked for a 5 percent salary decrease and the teachers wanted to prevent all cuts.
Teachers proclaimed the district had nearly $10 million in savings to prevent any future budget cuts. Teachers also argued the cuts were crowding classroom sizes and harming the students’ learning abilities.
In October, the teachers rallied in front of theschool to show their displeasure about the cuts.
After declaring an impasse,the district went back to the table to make another overture, Rose said.
“We decided it was important to make another overture to get us both back to the table and come to an agreement,” he said. “We wanted to try this one last time.”
The tentative agreement shows that the district did not cut the teachers’ salaries but instead extended their working year by two days to add a pair of professional development days, according to the agreement.
The 1.09 percent salary increase replaces the decrease that was set in place this year after the district cut the development days.
Professional development days are a pair of workdays before the school year starts that would allow the teachers to collaborate in creating class plans, Rose said.
“One of the things we kept on hearing from teachers was that they needed more time to plan and assess the students,” Rose said. “And this is a problem with the amount of time they have now. This will help and it’s a good idea.”
An extra boost
In addition to the new agreement between the teachers and the district, the district announced its decision to turn money received
by federal emergency jobs bill into additional jobs starting at the end of November. The $645,000 received will be put aside to hire one full-time English teacher, rehire a retired science teacher, and possible two math teachers.
But the money is a one-time thing – once it’s gone the district will have to either eliminate the positions or find new sources of funding, Rose said.
“Everyone has the same problem – class sizes are an issue,” Rose said. “We wanted to mitigate these things and with the federal money we were able to do that. We do what we can, where we can.”
Teachers’ association president Mitch Huerta did not return phone calls before press time.
