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The Pleasanton Unified School District and the Association of Pleasanton Teachers failed to reach a labor settlement agreement during Monday’s fact-finding session, as more than 450 teachers, families and community members rallied outside of the meeting in support of the union.
Fact-finding is a stage of the labor bargaining process where one neutral party and one representative from each side of negotiations at impasse reviews the proposals, documents and any facts before attempting to broker an agreement. If an agreement is not reached, then the fact-finder releases a report.
“We met with district management until 10:30 p.m.; however, we were not able to come to a deal,” APT president Cheryl Atkins told the Weekly. “The fact-finder will work on completing her recommendation in the coming days. Once the report is complete, we will have more information.”
Atkins said the two sides had been in the meeting since 9 a.m. Monday.
PUSD director of communications Patrick Gannon told the Weekly on Monday evening, while the session was going on, that the district’s goal was to reach an agreement that day. However, that did not happen.
“PUSD remains engaged and committed to continuing the dialogue in pursuit of a Tentative Agreement,” Gannon told the Weekly in a statement. “We appreciate the patience and understanding of our community during this process and are committed to keeping all stakeholders informed of our progress toward a resolution that supports our valued educators and, most importantly, our students.”
Atkins told the Weekly on Monday afternoon that the session was the union’s last effort to try and make a deal with the district before moving to strike and because APT members voted 98.5% in favor of authorizing a strike back in December, one could very well take place.
According to a press release from the California Teachers Association on Monday, because union members have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, APT leadership now has the power to call one if all state-supervised procedures are exhausted.
After the fact-finding session, the fact-finder has to release its report within 20 days of the session, which then must be made available to the public, according to the district’s website. Once that happens the district can “proceed to unilateral implementation” of the labor contract — that’s also when the union could decide to go on strike.
“We are advocating for our students so they will have the best educators, the best resources, and the best class sizes and caseloads,” Atkins said in the CTA release. “Pleasanton educators are demanding that district management repurpose their budget to invest in students and educators. We don’t want to strike, but we will if it means fighting for what our students deserve.”
Pleasanton is also part of a larger movement of teacher unions in the East Bay, including the Dublin Teachers Association, that are advocating for better contracts from their districts. The Dublin union is also in the process of conducting a fact-finding session, and similarly on the heels of a potential strike.
Both the Pleasanton and Dublin unions participated in a joint rally last week where multiple teachers unions in the region picketed in their respective cities to call for better labor contracts, according to a Feb. 21 press release from the East Bay Coalition for Student Success, which is a union support organization made up of several union chapters affiliated with the 310,000-member CTA.
The Pleasanton teachers union has been at a standstill in negotiations ever since last October when the union declared impasse in contract talks. Since the impasse decision, there have been several failed follow-up negotiation sessions between the two sides.
More recently, the two sides failed at reaching a deal during a mediation session in December, which is what led to the two having to enter into the fact-finding process.
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 health care with premium increases; reduced class sizes and workloads; and changes to the school calendar.
However, the district has continued to say over the last year that going above 10% in salary increases would mean making difficult decisions across the board, which was only emphasized after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office released its proposed 2024-25 state budget.
After that budget was released to the district, it made things more financially complicated for the district as presented at the Jan. 25 school board meeting. The district and the school board must now make tough decisions regarding cutting employee positions and laying off people.
In response to the news that the fact-finding session failed on Monday, the Board of Trustees will be holding a special board meeting on Wednesday (Feb. 28) at 6 p.m. to discuss and possibly approve a resolution that authorizes the district to take appropriate actions in case a strike does occur, so that normal operations are not affected.
According to the agenda report, the resolution estimates that over 300 substitute teachers will be needed for every day teachers are on strike.
“At the rate of $600 per substitute per day, the cost of this item is approximately $220,000 daily,” according to the report. “The net financial impact to the district would be offset by certificated salaries, as striking employees would be in unpaid status.”
I beg the Weekly to include numbers along with percentages. Percentages mean nothing unless we know the salaries. We need to know the pay range and median pay. We need to know how much the union’s demand would cost the district vs. how much the district’s plan would cost. This is basic info that should be in every story on this issue.
You can look up all public employee pay and pension details here https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2022/school-districts/alameda/pleasanton-unified/
I support paying deserving teachers a lot more than what they are currently being paid.
We need a way to identify the deserving teachers and staff, that needs to be based on student performance improvement, student and parent feedback on individual teachers.