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As the Association of Pleasanton Teachers and the Pleasanton Unified School District prepare to enter the fact-finding stage of the contract negotiations process, the district recently presented a budget update at the Jan. 25 school board meeting that outlines even more financial challenges.
Those challenges will not only impact the ongoing contract talks, but will also bring on reductions in staffing across the district and tough decisions the board will have to make in terms of cuts to positions, programs and other expenses.
Back in October, the APT declared an impasse in negotiations with the district. Since then, there have been counter proposals from both sides and multiple failed negotiation sessions between the two sides.
The district originally proposed raising teacher salaries 6.3% but has since increased its offer to 6.5%, while the APT initially asked for a 15% raise and has since lowered it to 14.25%. APT is also fighting for healthcare with premium increases; reduced class sizes and workloads; and changes to the school calendar.
The union also recently announced that its members voted 98.5% in favor of authorizing a strike ahead of a state-mandated mediation session in December in the hopes that both sides would reach an agreement before a strike would take place
While the teachers have not officially called a strike nor have immediate plans to, the vote does mean that the APT members have given union leadership the clearance to make that decision, if needed, as the two sides remain at impasse while far apart on salary proposals.
Both sides did not reach an agreement during that meeting in December, which means both parties will now enter what’s known as a fact-finding stage in the labor negotiations.
Fact-finding is a process where one neutral party, along with one representative from each side of the negotiations, reviews the proposals, documents and any facts before attempting to reach an agreement. If an agreement is not reached, then the fact-finder releases a report.
According to the PUSD negotiations website, the state-appointed mediator sent a letter to the Public Employees Relation Board (PERB) on Jan. 10 to release the two sides from mediation and to recommend they enter the fact-finding process in order to reach an agreement.
“Our next steps in the Impasse Process will be to work with PERB to establish the three-member panel and determine the hearing date, which will be scheduled within 10 days of the panel information,” the website states.
Once certified for fact-finding, that process could take up to 50 days as the panelists are appointed, the fact-finding hearing is held and the report is released. Once those steps are complete, the district could then implement a contract based on the findings and the union could be forced to strike, according to the district website.
APT President Cheryl Atkins returned to the school board meeting last week to reiterate what she has been saying for the past few months: teachers do not want to strike, but they will if they have to in order to make sure they get the compensation that they deserve.
“Our Pleasanton students, the heart and soul of our district, deserve nothing but the best,” Atkins told the board. “It is with this commitment to their well-being and academic success, that I stand up here to tell you, the current offer on the table does not align with the best interest of our students.”
“We are preparing for fact finding when we would rather be focused on our students,” she added. “We don’t want to strike, but we will for our students.”
Atkins also told the board about a press conference she attended on Jan. 24 that was organized by the East Bay Coalition for Student Success, which is made up of 18 California Teachers Association chapters across the East Bay including the Tri-Valley.
The press conference was a Q&A formatted meeting that featured union leaders, educators and parents across the East Bay who spoke about the challenges various districts are facing in regards to contract talks with their unions and how multiple unions, like Pleasanton, have authorized strikes.
The meeting was a way to emphasize the impact a multi-city teachers strike could have on students across the East Bay.
But as the district has continued to say over the last year, going above 10% in salary increases would mean making difficult decisions across the board. And those decisions could now be coupled with even bigger challenges the district is facing now that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office released its proposed 2024-25 state budget.
Assistant superintendent of business services Ahmad Sheikholeslami broke it down simply in his budget presentation to the meeting: cuts are going to have to be made across the district.
That means teachers, staff and management positions will face reductions along with programs and other expenses.
Earlier this month, the governor released his state budget for the next fiscal year and one of the key takeaways from it is that there’s about a $38 billion deficit over a three year period, Sheikholeslami said.
More specifically, there is a $14.3 billion deficit for education.
Another big takeaway is that the state’s cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which was previously projected to be almost 4%, has now gone down to 0.76%.
“We have a revenue impact of about $4.75 million in 2024-25 because of the COLA change, we have ongoing expenditure increases … it’s about $4.85 million, and then we have projected cost increases as our one time grants are ending and we have the natural cost increases that occurred into our budget on an annual basis,” Sheikholeslami said.
Because of this newly released information — along with other issues such as declining enrollment, the depletion of one-time pandemic funds and even more uncertainty on the state’s budget given that it has not been finalized — what that means for PUSD is that the district will have to make roughly $9.5 million in reductions to maintain the state-mandated minimum 3% reserve on the unrestricted general fund.
If the district doesn’t do anything, Sheikholeslami said that the district would continue to deficit spend and fully deplete its reserves leaving it in the negatives by the next fiscal year.
Sheikholeslami said that the district had built in the assumption of the 6.5% salary increase proposition to the APT into its budget but with other increased costs of business such as salary raises, health benefits and pension costs, the district is going to have to start looking at where it can make certain cuts.
One of the main areas Sheikholeslami proposed to reduce, which held the highest dollar amount in savings, was reductions on the district level which includes management, district office positions and high level support services, which in itself would net about $1.2 million in savings. He also said the district could implement a compensation adjustment for management not to exceed 5%.
But while he said the district executive cabinet worked on these potential cut recommendations through the lens of not affecting students, some of the potential cuts would directly affect the classrooms.
He said the district would be recommending layoffs to about five to 10 full-time equivalent elementary school positions and about 11 full-time equivalent positions in the high schools.
He also said staff would be recommending reductions in district-wide programs and supports; expenses like books and materials; and site and departmental discretionary budgets.
Apart from that, positions like vice principals and counselors could be reduced to the numbers the district had back in 2017.
Other solutions the district has come up with include moving around grant money to cover costs, having teachers teach combination classes — which Sheikholeslami said would be unavoidable — eliminating under-enrolled course selections and having students enroll in virtual classes.
Sheikholeslami said this would all help align classroom staffing with the current enrollment.
While the presentation was mostly informational, some board members did offer input on some of the suggestions.
Trustee Justin Brown was adamant about looking at reducing costs for contracted services while Trustee Kelly Mokashi and Student Trustee Valentina Avalos said they were worried about the reduction of counselors.
But as Sheikholeslami said, reductions are unavoidable. He said that staff will take the input from the board to come back for further approval of what positions the board will have to consider cutting in late February.
Once those decisions have been made, the district will begin the process of letting employees know if they are getting laid off.
Atkins, however, said even before the budget discussion that while she knows about the budget discussions and deficit spending, she thinks it is on the district to correct its wrongs and work out a contract that will still help retain and recruit teachers that the district desperately needs.
“We’ve been at this negotiation for over a year and yet you have continued to spend, spend, spend, and now say there’s no money left,” Atkins said. “The challenges we face as educators are intensified when we have revolving doors at our sites, and even worse positions remaining unfilled, putting additional strain on those who remain. The situation is not sustainable, and it jeopardizes the quality of education that we can provide for our students.”
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Here is a link to salaries through 2023. You can check any district/school. http://www.ed-data.org/district/Alameda/Pleasanton-Unified