Present: Chris Stewart, T Williams, Tom Madden, Pam Costain, Emma Hixson, Pat Pratt-Cook, Bill Green, Alan Giles

Emma says that they will be updating the Board about the proposal that was presented by MFT and about MFT’s request for mediation.  Emma references a printed summary of the MFT proposal and ticks through a list of what MFT has proposed.

• Two annual 5% raises over the contract
• Lots of changes to the hourly rates for things, where many are moved to the highest hourly rate, called the “direct instruction rate” (which Emma says would be “horrendously expensive”)
• Increase reserve teacher pay by $10 per day
• Increase the family insurance contribution by $600 the first year, $400 the second year
• Increase the district’s contribution to deferred compensation from $600 to $750
• Increase the amount of sick leave that can be converted to deferred compensation
• Increase the retiree health reimbursement contribution from $3000 to $3500
• Language clarifying that anytime a meeting goes beyond the “duty day” they would be paid the direct instruction rate.  (Emma says that current language is “much more professional”)
• Direct instruction rate pay for lost prep time
• Media teachers to have an additional 0.2 in their duty day without students, in addition to their prep (Emma says that in some cases this is reasonable, which she will detail later)
• Liability insurance for social workers who drive students

Emma says “here’s my favorite”

• Count Special Ed students would count as 1.5 student, ELL and free-and-reduced-lunch as 1.3 students and then teachers would receive a premium of $1000 for each student above a max class size guidelines determined by some formula.

• Stipends of $1000 for Special Ed teachers for any student above a recommended case load.

Emma says “That was a really special proposal.” Chris asks if “they want a pony and tickets to the David Cassidy concert?” Bill jokes that those elements are on the back of the sheet, Emma laughs that she thinks it is “Prince concerts”.

• Bidding ends by May 15, which currently ends at the end of June
• Placement by June first, which now is sometime in August.
• Postings would be for specific grade-level assignments, rather than postings just for “elementary teachers”, for example.
• Codify the practice of having teachers on site interview teams.
• Establish a process to “mothball” secondary licensures, to take their names off of specific seniority lists, which is related to realignment.
• No removal of summer school teachers without “just cause”.
• A lot of language around ECFE assignments of time
• The deletion of any mention of “fresh start” in the contract.

Emma says that she will review the district’s work-in-progress response to the MFT proposal.  Emma says that in response to the MFT proposal the district is saying:

• No to the 5% increase to the schedule in both years
• No to the direct instruction rate piece
• They are still talking about the increases to hourly rates and reserve teachers
• A possible increase to family insurance, in exchange for language defining the district’s specific dollar amount contribution to “full single”, rather than just defining that the district will pay for “full single”. 

Pat points out that teachers who currently get no insurance coverage get an additional $500 for other benefits.  Pat says that the district is working with the idea that teachers could move around benefit dollars, but there should be no net increase in dollars for benefits.

• They are still talking about deferred comp, which can be balanced with salary changes.
• No to the increase of sick-leave conversion
• The district has a different proposal related to the retiree health payment
• No to direct instruction rate for time extending beyond the duty day, which the district has an alternative proposal for.
• No to the lost prep piece
• No to the 0.2 duty day for media teachers (although there is some proposed language about media teachers)
• No to the liability insurance

T asks about situations where teachers are required to drive students.  Emma says that this is a good question and that there are some buildings where teachers frequently drive students and there are other buildings where this rarely happens.  Emma says that under the current system teachers are covered by their own insurance.  T says that if teachers do not have a policy that covers the use of the teacher’s car while they are on the job, their insurance would not cover things if there was an accident while a teacher is driving a student.  T says that this is a risk and Emma confirms this, saying that the insurance companies would “come after” the district in this case. Emma says that “this whole thing of driving students around is a very messy situation, that we have made some proposals around that have not met with much success yet”.

Chris says that he agrees with MFT on this point.  Chris says that he once had a job where he needed to drive clients around and at that time he paid for his basic insurance, while his employer paid for the policy rider that covered liability associated with transporting a passenger as part of his job.  Chris says that in this situation, when he was driving student, he felt very vulnerable.

Emma says “from a risk perspective, we don’t think staff should be driving students”.  Tom says that he is in agreement that “if you are making me drive somebody, then I’m going to make you pay for my insurance”, but, Tom says, the real question is should they be driving students.  T says “I don’t think that they should”, then both he and Pam note that there are situations where a student needs to get from point A to point B, and that district does not provide transportation.  Tom acknowledges this, but says that the policy needs to be clarified and that if district policy is that staff occasionally transports students, then they “should have something in place”.  T says that we need a solution.

Emma says that the administration “put forward” a potential solution to this, several years ago “under the reign of Dr. Peebles”, which was a “transportation solution”, but it was “majorly shot down” because it had a lot of complications.  However, Emma says, because the district transportation people are the professionals for transport “our perspective is that the solution is not to buy insurance for everybody”.  Alan says that even if the district paid for an insurance policy rider, “they” are going to sue the district anyway, to go after the “deeper pockets”.

Turning back to the administration’s response to the MFT proposal, Emma says that the proposal about counting different students as 1.3 is a “No”, but she says she has had an idea related to this that she will describe in a moment.  Bill says that Emma’s proposal is “devilish”.

Emma says that the proposed change in transfer and reassignment dates might be okay, but that’s related to the budget.  Pat says that they would not want to commit to these dates in the contract.  Tom says that “this is something that dings us all the time in the public”.  Pam says that in Peggy Ingison’s presentation at the Board meeting later that day, a revised budget schedule is being presented that will allow the bidding and placement process to happen earlier.  Pat says that it still won’t be as early as the dates that MFT has proposed, although those would be desirable.

Emma says that she will jump to the district’s proposal, that the Board can read the district’s response to the MFT proposal, which is basically “no, no…”

Emma says that tomorrow they will be finalizing their salary proposal, where they are working within a “defined percentage framework”.  Emma says that wherever possible, in all negotiations, they are proposing one-time payments rather than enhancements to salary schedules that compound.

Emma says that the benefits issue was discussed earlier, when they described the cost trade-offs of different benefits within a given net benefit cost.

Emma says that they are proposing to give a larger early-retirement incentive and health-premium payment this year’s retirees, to “incent” as many of them as possible to retire, which “will help us in many ways”.  Tom asks about the health insurance incentive and Emma says that with that, “we are looking to do something really splashy” and bump that up to $5000 for two years, then have it be the $3500 that MFT is requesting.  Emma says that the district’s proposal is that for next year’s retirees “there would be nothing”.  Tom asks if this means that five years from now that there would be “nothing for anybody” and Emma and Pat clarify that the payment doesn’t go away until everybody is eligible for Medicare, which will be more than five years.  Emma says that this transfer to Medicare is the subject of some issues with other school districts that are currently in the courts.

Pat clarifies that if retiring teachers want to get those larger amounts of early-retirement incentives, then they would need to notify the district fairly early, by dates that are specified in the contract.  Pat says that this will allow the district to incorporate the impact of the retiring teachers into planning position posting for the next year.  Tom says that if there was enough interest in this early-retirement incentive, that it might actually allow the district to do some hiring.  Emma and Pat clarify that their focus is that it would reduce layoff, which ties back to goals with transfer and reassignment.

Pam asks if there are a lot of teachers at the retirement point. Emma says that there are 70 teachers that are at the 30-year mark, but they are trying to figure out exactly how many are eligible because the rules for eligibility are somewhat complicated.  Chris asks about “the Louise Sundin deal about possibly buying out a bunch of teachers”.  Emma says that they are looking at that and this “might be to our advantage at this point”.   Pat says that they “talked about it today” and it looks like the maximum that the district could contribute is $17,000.

Emma says that the next thing in the district’s proposal is related to class size and it is related to ATPPS (Emma notes that MFT has made no proposal about ATPPS yet).  Emma says they are assembling a proposal for a salary schedule that combines some of the elements of a traditional schedule, such as lanes for education, with elements of an ATPPS schedule, with steps based on assessment.  This would be a singular, unified schedule for all teachers in year two of the contract. 

Emma says that they are looking at changing the ATPPS program so that instead of getting “enhancements for all kinds of things that go into base salary” they would receive one-time payments for achievements directly related to district goals and initiatives.  Emma says that the administration could take the MFT class-size proposal, and propose something with ATPPS that if teachers show achievement progress with those students, then they would get a one-time payment for that.  Pam says that there would be an incentive for performance and Emma agrees.

Emma says that “we are looking at a new salary schedule, folks” so all of this would have to fit into the overall funding that they are working with “which isn’t much”.  Emma says that the ATPPS and the salary and the retirement incentives and benefits are the most significant thing they are working on.  Emma says that they would also like to reduce the sabbaticals because they are costly and they take teachers out of classrooms.  However, Emma says that sabbaticals are a sacred cow.

Pam asks about something on the proposal summary that defines “professional”.  Pat says that is there because all of the MFT proposals seem to talk about paying teachers for every additional minute that they work above and beyond the regular day.  Pat says that “teachers are considered to be exempt employees under the fair labor standards act, just like the rest of us administrators.  But the district has for years gone along with the concept that you pay teachers for every minute that work beyond their regularly scheduled day. So, if we truly consider teachers to be professionals, then teachers should be like the rest of us professionals, in that if you put in more time you are not going to be compensated for the extra time.”  Pat says that they talked about having a definition of “professional” is in the contract.

Pam says that she thinks that this issue is “really key”, because if “you” look at some of the things that are being considered in “the reform agenda”, it “is all based on people acting like professionals and not hourly-wage employees”.  Emma says that it definitely ties to the transfer and reassignment issues.  Tom says “you can’t have it both ways”.  Emma says that she finds it disturbing that MFT is going this way.  She says that “Louise Sundin’s reign was all about teachers as professionals”.  Emma says that now there seems to be this “old-time union factory worker approach” and that this is “a disturbing trend”.  Bill says that he thinks it is Rob’s voice and Emma agrees.  Emma says “we know they feel resentful about increased burdens that have been place on them”, and teachers “do have a lot on their plates” so maybe this strike a chord with Rob’s tone.

Pam asks if there is a way to think about this that better defines the benefits of being considered a “professional”.  Bill says that the way that Louise talked about it was that there was something intrinsic about professionalism that went beyond the standard rewards of employment compensation.  Pam asks if they have talked to Rob about this and both Emma and Bill says that they have had many conversations about this. 

T asks where the concept is of us being partners.  He says that he doesn’t want to be seen as “snatching something out of the hands of teachers, just because we can”, but we all know that being a good teacher is not something that happens just on the clock.  T relates a story of a teacher he recently talked with, who described all that she did outside of the classroom to prepare for teaching, and that she just considered this a part of being a good teacher.  T says that “a lot” of our classroom teachers are like this and that they need to find a way to get through to the MFT leadership to get them to understand that this.

Bill says that this is another example of Rob’s influence on MFT, that they are not interested in being partners, that they now see themselves as adversaries.  Chris says that they can’t focus on Rob too much, that he is the leadership and what they have to work with.  Chris says that he is worried about being late in the game and that the MFT proposal is like “unicorns and ponies and fairies.”  Chris says that “given our budget situation, I just don’t get the whole partnership thing”.  Chris says that he is almost getting to a “parental point” where it seems that a teenager is asking for everything under the moon.

Chris says that we are always talking about “culture shift”, but that within the last week, multiple people on different levels (parents and business leaders and others) have told him that this is the one place where the district is afraid to do a culture shift. Chris says that he thinks it’s time to have listening sessions with parents and the public about the teachers contract so that they feel heard.

Pam says that what she thinks Chris is getting into is that the Board needs to have a discussion about strategy, and she wants to have that conversation as well.  Pam says that at the next meeting they should devote an entire hour to that discussion.

Emma describes that the teachers have filed for mediation saying that they wanted to get on the mediation calendar.  Emma says that the administration objected because they don’t think that the negotiations are at that stage.  Emma says that the BMS called her and said they understand the administration’s point of view, but that since mediation can’t start until December, the administration and MFT should plan on mediation but continue to talk. Emma says that she and Rob have agreed to continued discussions.  Emma reports Rob saying that depending on how MFT receives the administration’s proposal they might have a couple more meetings before mediation starts.  Emma told Rob that she thinks that they can work out a financial settlement.  Emma says that they haven’t even talked about money yet and of course they are going to start high.

Pam says that we don’t want a financial settlement before staffing issues are settled.  Emma says that the financial settlement would be contingent on a total agreement and that it is a strategy to settle up on the money first which might then motivate settlement on other parts of the contract.  Emma says that this is her strategy, “to get them to see that we have a whole thing put together, except for this.”

Emma says that she doesn’t “think things are as grim as it sounds, but they might get there.”

The meeting is adjourned.