Extension of the teaching day for middle school math a key issue
in labor dispute
Gilroy – In one week teachers will close up their classrooms and the school year will end because the calendar says it’s time, but when it comes to the teacher contract for the same school year, it’s an entirely different story.
The Gilroy Teacher’s Association and district officials met Thursday for yet another one of this year’s many negotiation sessions to reach a compromise on two key issues of the 2005-2006 contract: instructional minutes and class size.
Before the board approved a schedule change in early May that tacks on another period at the end of the school day, GTA President Michelle Nelson was on the verge of signing an agreement.
“We were hoping to get everything done by May,” Nelson said.
But the schedule change altered everything, she said. Now it’s doubtful the union and the district will agree on a contract before school let’s out.
The union’s issue with hours is a result of the conditions laid out in the district’s Accountability Task Force plan.
Teachers claim they have to put in extra uncompensated hours to complete the data and other requirements of the task force’s plan.
And their beef with the new middle school schedule is the addition of a “non-teaching period,” on Wednesdays, which would be under the jurisdiction of the district and will not take the place of a teacher’s prep period. On Thursday, Nelson announced that teachers want control over that Wednesday time slot.
“Our response is we’d like to have control over that,” said Assistant Superintendent Linda Piceno.
Piceno pointed out that under the new middle school schedule – set for implementation in the fall – educators’ instructional load will be 55-minutes lighter and Wednesday’s 75-minute block needs to be district-directed.
“We don’t feel that’s a reasonable request and we’re not prepared to give it to you,” she said, referring to Nelson’s request that teacher’s maintain control over the non-prep period.
The board’s decision to approve the middle school schedule change is a response to the district’s low math proficiency. Also, the extra class allows students enrolled in remedial courses to take an elective, something currently unavailable because of time constraints.
Still considering the work-hour debate, the district’s lawyer Carol Stevens said the two parties are much closer to reaching an agreement on that issue than class size.
Stevens called the union’s proposal that class size in grades six through 12 shall not exceed 34 students “extremely unrealistic and very expensive.”
Nelson explained that most of the teachers she spoke to said they have 34 students or less, but Stevens and Piceno jumped on the word “most.”
The two pointed out that under the GTA’s proposal the district would have to hire another teacher or not allow students to take over-booked classes if they exceeded the teacher to student ratio. And for students, particularly high school students who need to take certain classes to satisfy graduation requirements, that would be a disaster, they said.
The district cannot “live with absolutes” with grades six through 12, Piceno said.
Nelson also expressed concerns regarding the district’s decision to include the kindergarten through third grade classes, which are part of the class size reduction program, in the district’s average.
Because those grades have a teacher to student ratio of 20 to 1, it falsely appears that the district has smaller classes than it actually does, Nelson said. The GTA filed a grievance over the class size issue.
“We are prepared to go to arbitration if we don’t settle,” Nelson said. “I think it’s a waste of energy but we’re prepared to go down that road if we need to.”
In the next four to six weeks the two entities will begin negotiating a 2006-2007 contract.
