We’ve said it quite a few times: our local associations are working together to ensure that all our members are informed and united as we work through an unprecedented legislative session and very challenging negotiations.
In the last email, we showed you a list school superintendents and principals developed, indicating where they are likely (or not) to cut district budgets this year. We’ve already addressed some of the most common topics: furlough days, salary schedule changes, shorter school weeks, and contracting out. We aren’t saying districts are going to do any of these things nor that our locals will agree to them. But we want to make sure we all understand them in case we face them in our districts.
Metro Area locals are currently along the bargaining continuum: from the early stage of surveying our members and researching and writing proposals to meeting at the table with the district. Some may delay bargaining until the Legislature deals with 2010-11 school year funding. Lawmakers will begin that debate very soon with the goal of completing it in late March, before the state budget bill comes before them.
Whether your local association bargains in a “traditional” way or uses an “interest-based process,” we will be bargaining this year despite the economy and the state budget. You deserve to be paid a professional salary; we will not give up on our goal to achieve this salary for every educator. And because this is an Association core value, we will be seeking salary increases. We will not ask for “nothing!”
What happens in bargaining will vary from that starting point, however, because one local contract is different from a neighboring local’s contract in more ways that the negotiations approach we use. For example, some of us bargain insurance; others decide insurance benefits and cost questions through an insurance committee separate from bargaining. The same holds true for class size, curriculum issues, staffing, student contact time, and a whole host of other topics. As we do not have a collective bargaining law in Colorado, the scope of bargaining is determined by the parties that bargain: our local and the school board.
During times like these, local negotiators may use this opportunity to enhance non-economic provisions of the contract as some of our Metro Area locals plan to do. They will consider contract language for work load reductions; improved performance evaluation; a better mentoring process for new teachers; strengthening due process rights; improvements in leaves and planning time; a stronger teacher voice in decision making; and many other issues.
Though our environments are vastly different, WE WILL BE BARGAINING and we need you with us, unified and strong. No local association is an island. All of us are stronger than any of us alone.
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