Four years ago, CTA worked with Governor Brown to put forward Proposition 30 to increase funding for public education by temporarily raising income taxes on California’s highest wage earners and a small sales tax increase. Passing that initiative in 2012 has been a life saver for our students as money is being restored to our schools and colleges after years of budget cuts, layoffs, tuition hikes and furlough days.  

Unfortunately, the additional revenues from Proposition 30 are coming to an end. It’s why CTA has been working with a coalition of education, labor, health care and community organizations to plan ahead and ensure our state stays on the road of economic recovery and doesn’t fall back to more budget cuts. State economic projections show a $5 billion hole for public education in just two years. 

 At our meeting on January 31, CTA State Council members voted to support a new initiative, The Children’s Education and Health Care Protection Act, which extends the income tax on the wealthiest Californians for 12 years. The sales tax increase of Prop. 30 expires as planned this year. The new measure is expected to raise $8-11 billion a year. Like Prop. 30, that money will go directly into a special fund to support education. By helping the state maintain education resources, the state has additional funding for other critical programs like health care for low-income children. 

 CTA and our coalition partners are now working to qualify this new initiative for the November 2016 ballot and is launching a signature gathering campaign. We must get 850,000 voters to sign petitions. In order to meet this statewide goal, we will all need to work together! 

 Just as you helped in 2012, we need your help now in circulating petitions and gathering signatures from members, friends and family. We just received petitions this week, and they are available at CTA offices across the state. Talking points and other information about the initiative and signature gathering effort are below. I ask you to work with your primary contact staff to get the petitions and other resources you need. 

 We have a relatively short window for signature gathering, as all petitions need to be returned by the first week of April. Keep an eye out for more e-mails and updates in coming weeks. Working together and with our coalition partners, we can get this initiative qualified to ensure California stays on the road to recovery and to protect our students, schools, colleges and communities from another round of devastating cuts. 

 Thank you! 

February 23 Rep Council Agenda

Hiring Ratio MOU

Click here to download the update – or read this post.

Thank all members who participated in our General Meeting on January 19, 2016 to discuss compensation comparisons (visit http://goo.gl/pYvmNf for the presentation). If you have any questions regarding the presentation, please contact Brenda Hensley at mathgirl2001@yahoo.com

Thank you also to all members who took our very first online bargaining survey! We saw a 13% increase in participation over last year (paper survey) and we are very pleased with the process. We are working on summarizing the data and working with our Executive Board to develop bargaining strategies for 16-17. Many of you took the time to make comments about things you were concerned about. Some of those concerns were not issues we can negotiate, but relevant comments will be forwarded to the appropriate VTA committee.

We plan to sunshine our contract at the March 3^rd school board meeting. “Sunshining” is an official term for opening negotiations. We have not set any bargaining dates with the District at this time.

The VTA and VUSD teams (and a few others) met on February 4^th and 5th, 2016 for two days of Interest-Based Bargaining Training.

VTA: Brenda Hensley, Kim Campbell, Gary Masterson, Todd Blanset, Lynne Grow, Moira McSweeney (President), Steve Savage (CTA Staff)

 VUSD: Randy Henry, Ed Santopadre, Cliff DeGraw, Manolo Garcia, Mark Frazier, Janet Dietrich, Deo Pernaud, Jane Shamieh (Superintendent), Nolan Sullivan (Board member), Shelly Dally (Board member).

 Here is a small excerpt about Interest-Based Bargaining (IBB):

(http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/lkaboolian/publications/Win-Win-chapter1.pdf)

Interest-based bargaining involves a good-faith effort by both sides to understand the other side’s needs, interests, and concerns. IBB provides a framework that loosens the rigidity of “positional bargaining” where each party comes to the table with a set of desired terms that it believes is the only way to satisfy its own interests. IBB requires that the parties look beyond specific demands and, through substantive discussion, brainstorm possible solutions. The parties negotiate with one another, instead of against one another. They consider problems to be matters of shared concern, where each has an interest in finding a solution satisfactory to both parties. Successful implementation of IBB does not call upon the parties to compromise principles or neglect the legitimate roles and needs they each have in the employer-employee relationship.

As we embark on this new process, VTA Bargaining Team members remain extremely committed to representing the membership in the best way possible and communicating with the membership regarding the bargaining process and our progress. We are looking to make our sessions more productive, improving our working relationships with VUSD representatives and achieving more win-win settlements for both VTA and VUSD.

Bargaining updates may, through this process, look very different. This process doesn’t necessarily involve trading paper proposals. Hence, initial proposals and counterproposals (since we might not actually have any!) may not appear in bargaining updates. You may also see joint communiqués from VUSD and VTA regarding bargaining progress.

We may also choose to do some of this year’s bargaining using IBB and some using traditional methods. This will be a very fluid situation and we will keep you updated as much as possible as we proceed.

As always, as we move through the negotiations process, please stay in contact with your VTA site rep and your VTA Director. There is always a Bargaining Report (verbal) at Rep Council and all members are welcome to attend those meetings.

Exec Board Agenda Feb. 9