Teachers working for Orcutt Academy Charter School will now become members of the district’s teachers’ union.
After a year of legal back-and-forth between the Orcutt Union School District and the Orcutt Educators Association, the school board decided at its June 23 meeting it would no longer challenge the association’s petition to represent charter school teachers.
Association president Monique Segura said a handful of charter employees first approached the union for backing in spring 2009.
The association filed a petition with the state Public Employees Relations Board (PERB) in January 2010. The petition asserted that charter employees should be represented by the district’s existing union because, according to Segura, “we all have the same employer and we’re represented by the same [school board].”
The district and the union attended several hearings before an administrative law judge and a PERB panel, the latter of which sided with the Orcutt Educators Association in two different rulings, including one in March and another one in June.
Shortly after the June decision, the school board announced it would no longer challenge the petition.
“When we first started the charter three years ago, we wrote it in a way that gave us flexibility in hiring because we wanted to be able to hire the right person for each position,” district Superintendent Bob Bush said.
The original charter specified that only the district could represent Orcutt Academy employees. Once the employees unionize with the Orcutt Educators Association, Bush said, “bumping rights and seniority rights” come into play.
When asked about the aforementioned rights, the association’s Segura said, “The union doesn’t hire and the union doesn’t fire teachers. What we do do is ensure that our members have due process.”
She said that there are seniority rights, but those rights are part of the state’s education code.
Now that all of the district’s employees are represented by the same union, Segura said, “I think the morale of our district will be one and we’ll be able to move forward.”
The charter teachers will start paying membership dues once school starts.
Bush said he understands why some district employees might be upset about the situation with the charter.
“They might think, ‘Wait a minute, I’m paying dues. Why aren’t they paying dues?’” he said.
Bush said an overwhelming majority of the charter’s teachers told the district they didn’t want to be part of the union.
“We were representing the interests of the charter’s employees,” he said. “We could have asked to go to court, but we decided enough is enough.”
Some members have also expressed dismay over the amount of money the district spent on legal fees. The Sun was unable to determine an exact amount, but receipts indicated the district spent upwards of $14,000.
Bush said, “It costs money to go to PERB because it costs money to hire a lawyer. OEA doesn’t have to pay because it’s backed by the CTA [California Teachers Association].”
Now the district and the union will begin negotiating the charter employees’ contracts, and most likely contracts for employees of the Los Alamos School District.
The state board of education is set to make a decision about a Los Alamos-Orcutt school district merger on July 12.
“It’s all a done deal on the [California Department of Education] website,” Bush said. “We’re just waiting for finalization at the meeting.”
This article appears in Jul 7-14, 2011.