After a year and a half of contract negotiations between the Santa Maria-Bonita School District and the teachers union, there were some areas where the two parties could not reach an agreement, leading the union to declare a unilateral impasse.
The last collective bargaining contract reached by the district and the union was valid from 2017 to 2020, so a new agreement needed to be negotiated. The two parties engaged in more than 35 negotiation sessions and reached tentative agreements for a dozen of the articles, including leaves, transfers, retirement, and discipline procedures.
The Santa Maria Elementary Education Association (SMEEA) put in final offers for five of the articles up for negotiation, which the district didn’t accept, leading the union to declare an impasse. When two parties jointly declare an impasse, it means they agree that no further progress is possible without mediation. But in this case, the district did not support the union’s declaration.
“It’s a unilateral impasse,” SMEEA President José Segura said. “The district didn’t agree that we were at an impasse, even though they’re no longer making any efforts to really address the concerns that we have for some of these articles.”
The district sees things differently: Superintendent Luke Ontiveros said the union didn’t cooperate with some of the district’s attempts at negotiation.
“Between last May of 2020 and December of 2020, the leadership of the teachers association did not respond to any of the proposals that the district provided on any of those issues,” Ontiveros said. “We’ve got to get out of this cycle of waiting and waiting, and then throwing our hands up and saying, ‘We’re at impasse.’”
Segura feels progress was still being made during that time.
“We may have put some articles aside because we didn’t really see a clear path towards a next proposal that didn’t result in us just bargaining against ourselves, and so we focused on other articles where we felt like we could make some progress with the district, which is what we did,” he said.
One of the articles in contention is association rights. The union wants 100 percent release time for its president, which would allow them to work on union duties full time. Right now, Segura is required to also teach part time.
“It’s super difficult to run a union with over 900 members scattered across 21, 22 working sites, to have somebody who’s just part time, and in the classroom part time,” Segura said. “For me personally, it meant me sacrificing my work-life balance in order to meet the needs of my members.”
The district believes that 50 percent release time, which would have the union president in the classroom half the time, is sufficient to perform union duties. Ontiveros compared SMEEA to the Classified School Employee Association (CSEA), another union that represents other school employees in non-teaching positions.
“The president of CSEA, through an agreement in the contract, has 10 hours of release time for association business, and with more members is able to get that job done and their day job,” Ontiveros said. “So a half-time release for the president of the teachers association, in my estimation, is adequate release.”
Segura said he’s not just concerned with how much he’s working as both a union president and a teacher, but also what is expected of teachers in and beyond the classroom.
“When we’re talking about class size … that’s work-life balance,” Segura said. “When we’re talking about forcing teachers to provide additional hours outside of the work day, that’s work-life balance. Reducing the number of days we have to conference with parents, that’s about a work-life balance. … I think that’s probably more important now than it has been in a long time because of what folks have done through during this whole COVID time.”
SMEEA filed its declaration of impasse with the Public Employment Relations Board in late April, and while the district did not agree with the union’s declaration, Ontiveros said the board determined on April 27 that the parties are indeed at an impasse. The parties will be assigned a mediator within five days, Ontiveros said, to help them attempt to reach a settlement.
Though currently at a standstill, both sides are hopeful that they will eventually settle on a new contract.
“We want to get to a settlement,” Ontiveros said. “Our employees are always incredibly responsive, and especially over this last year and a half with this COVID situation. The issue is really that the leadership see things differently.”
Segura is “still very optimistic that we’re going to settle with the district, and hopefully soon,” he said.
“I’m always optimistic about these things, and I always go into them with the intent of finding common ground so that we can move forward—without, in this particular cycle, sacrificing more of my members’ work-life balance,” he said.
This article appears in May 6-13, 2021.