District: Negotiations between the high school district and its faculty association should be made public
The Santa Maria Times covered a poll on low teacher morale allegedly taken by the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District’s faculty association. Association President Mark Goodman reported that the union polled approximately 260 of its 381 members regarding morale and received 182 responses. He told the board that 155 responded, so 41 percent or 30 percent of teachers are suffering from low morale. That number, if true, is unacceptable, but it is not the nearly three-quarters of the faculty as asserted by the Times. Factual data and truth become casualties during contract negotiations.
The following day, the Times carried a story of teachers protesting prior to the board meeting. It was a shame the reporter did not stay for the meeting. The real story took place in the boardroom, as retiring classified and certificated employees were recognized and honored for their service, and Delta High School’s teaching staff was recognized for receiving the Model School Award.
The association received the district contract proposal in March. Mr. Goodman “sunshined” their proposal at the May board meeting, but it cannot be officially received until June. As board president, I asked Mr. Goodman in open session if the association would agree to bargain over the summer. He replied that he would have to check with the negotiating team. They continue to stall the process, and yet protesting teachers carry picket signs reading “Contract Now.”
I asked if they would agree to negotiate in public, which was negatively received. Transparency would be a tremendous benefit in “sunshining” the process for teachers, district administration, and the public.
As members of the board, we have a responsibility to provide the best learning environment possible for our students. A major part of that is to ensure that the teachers in our district are afforded the best teaching environment possible. We continually strive to balance our stewardship of taxpayer dollars with our responsibility to our students, teachers, classified staff, parents, and the communities we serve and to whom we are held accountable.
As the only media outlet seeming to take the “poll” seriously, the Times appeared to take a greater interest in promoting the union’s posturing than in accuracy. The Times editorial, “Seeing issues in teaching,” used the so-called “poll” to launch an assault on our district and bemoaned several social ills that have negatively affected teachers, including a lack of parental involvement in the education process. We are encouraged by parents who attend board meetings to become involved in their children’s education. Parents seek seats at the table in Shared Decision Making, a point the association inexplicably fought in the last contract negotiations. Parental involvement comes with a cost. One parent said he was harassed in a threatening manner at his place of business by a negotiating team member in a despicably thuggish act because of the parent’s interest in expanding parent involvement in Shared Decision Making.
We value our teachers, and we negotiate in good faith and in a fiscally responsible manner. The association seeks to create an adversarial atmosphere with teachers sending union crafted form letters and flooding board members’ phones with mostly anonymous texts. Some are inappropriate and hurtful as they make reference to one board member’s deceased spouse. The association’s tactics have delayed negotiations and have created enmity between teachers and the administration.
I would offer Abraham Lincoln’s words, spoken during his first inaugural address as a challenge to the association: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory … will yet swell … when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Victor Tognazzini is the president of the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District’s Board of Trustees. Send comments to the interim editor at clanham@santamariasun.com.
Teachers: There are two sides to every story …
It is a sad commentary on local education that SMJUHSD Superintendent Mark Richardson and the school board president resorted to publishing guest commentaries in the Santa Maria Times to communicate with the teachers. Here is some information that they left out of their commentaries.
It is a shame that the SMJUHSD management and its board have violated agreements—such as the number of students in a classroom—with teachers many times this year. Mr. Richardson asserts that there are seven grievances that have been filed but in reality, how does he know since he doesn’t communicate with the teachers who volunteer to file the grievances. The teachers have spent more time talking to the district’s lawyers than Mr. Richardson.
Why?
According to the commentary written by School Board President Victor Tognazzini, they don’t want to hear from teachers. If board members make site visits, those visits are only 45 minutes long. Most of the teachers don’t even know what they look like. We have many award-winning teachers, students, and programs that the school board has never seen in action.
Why?
What the school board has done is to allow the district office to grow in size by adding positions. An assistant director of human relations was hired last year.
Why?
Mr. Richardson and the board paid an outside negotiator to negotiate with the teachers.
Why?
The district office is a revolving door for highly paid administrators. Here’s a shocking analysis of the SMJUHSD management. Of the 20 administrators from superintendent down to assistant principal, only two have taught in our school district.
Why?
The school board president has called for public negotiations for the teachers’ contract. It is curious that he hasn’t called for public negotiations for his own monthly stipend and health benefits as a school board member, nor has he called for public negotiations for the contracts of the administrators.
Why?
It is obvious that the theme here is dysfunction. The reality is that many teachers have low morale and it affects the students that they see every day; Mr. Richardson and the school board president did not suggest a solution in their monologues.
Why?
The Santa Maria High School Faculty Association can be reached through interim Editor Camillia Lanham at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 11-18, 2015.