The 700 teachers in the Yuba City Unified School
District (YCUSD) will be on strike as of Thursday, September 8, 2016 because
the district prefers to hoard millions in state funding rather than resolve a
crisis over competitive pay that will attract and retain qualified teachers in
the midst of a teacher shortage.
The strike notice provided by
the Yuba City Teachers Association (YCTA) to the district cited both the
disagreement over finances and unfair labor practices as the causes of the
strike. “The district’s own actions have put us in this crisis,” said YCTA
President Dina Luetgens. This Yuba City strike
will be the first in the area since the Stockton strike in January of 1990. Luetgens
noted the response to the strike date announcement from YCTA teachers and
community members has been overwhelmingly positive and heartwarming.
“We’re in
this crisis because this district continues to ignore the desperate need to
attract and retain quality, qualified teachers,” she said. YCUSD teacher salaries are 13.4% below the
state average. YCTA proposed a 13% salary
increase to address the pay gap and the exodus of teachers leaving to
neighboring districts for better pay and working conditions. The last, best and
final offer YCTA received for the 2015-16 school year was essentially 0% on the
salary schedule plus one-time pay for extra duties. This from a district that
received $17 million in additional state funding that year, which is over a 15% increase in the
general fund for 2015-16. Because of its
healthy financial status, YCUSD transferred $3.5 million into other accounts,
rather than making those funds available to teachers and students.
Luetgens says the district can afford the teachers’
proposal. YCTA has also filed unfair
labor charges against the district alleging bad behavior, including
intimidation, and ignoring information requests or providing inaccurate or
incomplete information.
“YCUSD’s bad behavior started at the bargaining
table were all the same ‘take it or leave it’ and ‘all or nothing’ packages,
some items were re-worded and no substantive changes were offered,” Luetgens
added.
YCUSD has denied teachers
access to their classrooms by forcing them to turn in and pick up their keys on
a daily basis, frightening parents with threats of discipline for supporting
teachers during the strike and threatening teachers with discipline if they
participate in a strike. Based on
complaints filed by YCTA, the
California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) issued a legal complaint
against the Yuba City Unified School District (YCUSD) alleging that the YCUSD
violated state law when it adopted a series of board resolutions earlier this
summer threatening to discipline employees who exercise their legally protected
right to strike.
Luetgens said Yuba City
teachers are fed up with making financial sacrifices for a district that does
not respect teachers’ dedication, professionalism, or expertise. The district
is misleading the community and taking advantage of the hard-working parents in
Yuba City who may not realize their school district is running good people out
by its disrespectful behavior, Luetgens said. “This type of demeaning behavior
does not help the parties reach agreement.”
“It’s time for the Yuba City
school board to stop browbeating teachers, to stop disrespecting students, and
parents and to stop engaging in deception and intimidation around
negotiations,” she declared. “If the superintendent
and the school board think their disrespectful actions towards teachers will
have no consequences, then we have news for them.”
Now
that a strike date has been called, teachers, speech and language pathologists,
nurses, counselors and school psychologists will refrain from educating, and
from any other duties, for the duration of the strike. YCTA will organize
picket lines, rallies and other actions to make the strike visible and
effective.
“It’s now up to the Yuba City Unified School District to choose to engage
in meaningful discussions that provide a fair and just settlement,” said Luetgens. That means a settlement that invests resources in ways that “help
improve student achievement by attracting and retaining the best teachers
possible, instead of offering sham proposals that are not what they appear to
be when you read the fine print,” she said.
“Teachers always have been
and still are ready and willing to negotiate,” she added. “We are standing up
for our students and the future of our schools and our community.”
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The Yuba City Teachers Association is a chapter of the 325,000-member
California Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the 3 million-member
National Education Association
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