Napa Valley EA Exec Board/Council Meeting
May 12, 2020, 3:30-4:30 PM
Minutes
In Attendance: President - Gayle Young, Vice President - Mary Duenow, Secretary - Debbie Kmiec, Treasurer - Karen Fleming, Directors-at-Large: High School - Deb St. Clair, Middle School - Sara Kvidahl-Schmitz, Elementary School - Kristin Pruitt, Chief Negotiator - Courtney Garcia, Communication - Mike Wilmarth, Political Action - Michael Alger, CTA Rep - Michelle Washington
No solid stuff coming from the state of California and what the start of school will look like. This info is in the all division newsletter. Vintage is trying to plan a graduation affair on June 2nd & June 3rd if teachers want to see seniors following social distancing and it is during their teach time does that violate the contract? Monday non zoom day and Tuesday through Thursday is normal zoom meetings. Kids will start getting diplomas the day after memorial day.
If on council invitations were sent for council to meet throughout the summer. From what Gayle has heard from Rob & Rosanna there will probably be a combination of being in the classroom, virtual, etc.
Redwood Service Center Council Meeting on Saturday, May 16, 2020.
Rob will be talking on the budget at the school board meeting. The legislature had a better outlook on what the budget would look like, expectation is that there will be some pretty big cuts. His power point showed that we wouldn’t get the COLA, the possibility of furlough days, would we get rid of the 2 additional PD days, without legislation we could really only go down to 180 days. There would be personnel cuts if we had a 2% drop last time this happened it was denied by the state. If there is going to be a cut in August it has to go through legislation.
Gayle brought up Disario and Cecile and the amount of money that is going to these consultants. They are working on bonds. Gayle asked about the number of consultants being used. Rob said he would be happy to come talk to us at a contractive services meeting. Michael McDowell has been paid out of site funds, Karen Junker, Barb Franco running Harvest’s Bell schedule meeting, etc. These are the questions that we need to ask Rob
Tony Thurmond at press conference yesterday said that for 2019-2020 schools will be fully funded, and for 2020-2021 we will still get ADA for kids whether they are in their seat or there by Zoom. Instead of $10k it may only be $8,000. They could lower ADA or change their funding mechanism. Re-opening is going to open county by county and guidelines still need to be put in around the funding piece.
There was mention of not having CAASPP testing for the 2020-2021 school year listed in a press article.
Sarah Williams is here until the end of the year. Who do we go to regarding EL kids? Dana was going to be checking in with Martha regarding how Harvest will be staffed around ELD.
Wondering about a loss of students leaving and they are only looking at current enrollment and we don’t have actual numbers we may see an increase in the decline of enrollment. What about those families who are choosing to stay in full on-line learning versus attending actual school. Would this run through independent study or the actual school. There are some teachers who love this type of teaching (virtually). There would need to be tighter expectations than what is currently taking place. Recommended that the district send something out to the families mentioning the possibility so we don’t lose students to CAVA, California Connections Academy, etc.
All Spanish teachers have been called back, most science, math from RIF, looking at calling back PE. Still quite a few Social Studies and English teachers being let go. There is a whole schedule on how they will be rehired based on seniority. Transfers have started today. Not all TOSA’s went to interventionists. Not all wanted that position and some were not hired. It will go to seniority as to how they are placed. Dana goes through seniority wise for those teachers who are losing their position due to school closing. If they don’t take one of the positions being offered at Bel Aire, Alta Heights, or Willow then they will go into the seniority pool.
The teachers that have the reassignment blue slip there needs to be some type of seniority process. There isn’t a lot of change at the secondary level unless there is overstaffing at the site. Dana is trying to keep them at the secondary level as long as they are appropriately placed.
We have lawyer fees CTA’s pay for the first $5000 then they pay 50%. We currently have a bill for about $6000 and we do not know what the cost will be for the judge. We have a decline in teachers and we will be under 800 teachers and it is important that we raise our dues. Looking at the bylaws we should be able to put it to a vote through the rep council not entire members. We need some way to message it out to our members. Are our dues relevant to other associations our size and we need to work on a messaging campaign. Need this to go out to all of the sites before we ask the site reps are asked to vote. Our local dues are $10.60, we are the lowest in the state, and our dues amount hasn’t changed in over 30 years. There is a threshold of $184 a year. We pay $106 a year. There is a threshold that talks about paying the higher amount there has been talk about getting to the higher threshold over a period of time not all at once. If we don’t do something we won't be able to afford the release time, events etc. If we wanted to get to the threshold it would be $4 a month for this year and $4 a month for next year. CTA and NEA haven’t mentioned anything about dues increases. Recommended that we spread out over more than 2 year. Our dues cover arbitration and at this point CTA would not cover this at this point. The lawyer did help to get some pink slips rescinded so that is a plus for being a member of the union as well as the return rights etc. Less anxiety of having a lawyer who deals with ed code all the time than putting the stress on one of us. Would have been nice if CTA paid for all of it.
Suggested to have our site rep meeting on June 1st instead of May 18 since the Governor’s thing is meeting on May 19. We would have more information and consensus was made to move the site rep meeting. Goal is to get something out to our members by May 19 asking for input for increasing our dues and have it returned by May 26 so we can vote at stie rep meeting.
Toby is sitting on the committee on the re-opening of the state as well as Tony Thurmond to make sure more attention is given toward education and what teachers have done to pull off distance learning.
Gayle is going to schedule a meeting with ROb to talk about the contracted services. We want to see the money we are saving and where it is going.
Meeting adjourned at 4:50pm
