GILROY
– The nearly yearlong contract negotiations between Gilroy
Unified School District and its teachers met with another delay in
recent weeks.
GILROY – The nearly yearlong contract negotiations between Gilroy Unified School District and its teachers met with another delay in recent weeks.
Negotiators for teachers and the GUSD had to cancel their February meeting dates due to inaccurate district records on teacher and managerial staff starting dates. Having accurate start-date information is important because it is used in setting teacher and staff seniority, which would determine who gets laid off first in the event the district has to cut existing jobs next year.
“This is a very big deal. If this isn’t straightened up you can have teachers with seniority getting laid off before new teachers,” said Michelle Nelson, president of the Gilroy Teachers’ Association.
Linda Piceno, GUSD’s assistant superintendent of human resources, said the district did not keep a specific list of starting dates because the last time there was this level of a budget crisis was 1990-91.
“We’re going to have an updated list every year from here on out,” Piceno said. “The goal is to have the list updated and available by Oct. 1 of every year.”
The district must notify its teachers by March 15 if they will be laid off next school year. The district has said
its excess reserve funds, a current hiring freeze and various operational expense cuts would spare teachers’ jobs this contract year.
GUSD teachers are in the final year of a four-year agreement. Each year, a certain number of contract issues can be reopened and negotiated. Sixteen items were eligible for re-negotiation this year.
Tentative agreements have been reached on six items and Nelson hopes to finish the others by the end of March.
The recent negotiations delay is yet another in a process that has been marred by a massive $34 billion state revenue shortfall and a more than 20 percent fee hike by health care providers.
Teacher salaries and benefits take on added significance in Gilroy as the school district has made quality teacher recruitment and retainment a reform priority.
A key negotiations piece involves absorbing the rise in costs by having teachers pay a portion of their health care fees out of pocket next year. But teachers claim insurance must be covered fully to be competitive with other school districts.
For this school year, the district has covered nearly all of the out-of-pocket expenses for teachers. Having done so in a tight budget year could hinder GUSD’s ability to increase salaries.
The health care crisis emerged in the fall when a major health insurance provider, LifeGuard, for district employees announced it was headed for bankruptcy. GUSD switched its health coverage to Blue Cross of California, but that company and other health insurance providers for the district have since increased rates by roughly 20 percent.
At a school board meeting in February, a consultant that GUSD is paying $21,000 informed trustees there is nothing in the market suggesting health care costs will taper off any time soon.
The negotiations, which have been ongoing since March 2002, have met with complications other than the budget and health care crises. Over the summer, three of the district’s four negotiators either left or took new positions in the district, meaning the GUSD team had to be rebuilt.
“This has been a monster negotiation process,” Nelson said. “And when we get it done, we have to start all over again to do an entirely new contract for next year.”
