Here are some things we know and some questions we are asking.

One.  Last summer UESF filed some Request for Information (public documents) with SFUSD.  One result was,

“The combined salaries of the top thirteen administrators equals 2.6 million dollars per year”,

which is more than half of the 4.2 million needed to pay for a one percent pay raise for all UESF members.  What has happened with this information during the bargaining?

Two.  Intrepid Balboa HS teachers filed an RFI several years ago on administrative salaries.  My analysis of those figures shows that during the economic crash years of 2009-10 to 2010-11,  a few central admin took pay raises, some took 2% pay cuts and most had no change to their salaries.   This is good,

but during that same time all educators took four furlough days, which is about a 4% pay cut.  And it was during that year that the SFUSD tricked the T-10’s into giving up an hour a day, a 14% pay cut on top of also taking the furlough days!!

Then in the following year, according to the figures, administrators got, on average, a 7% salary increase!  UESF members continued to live with a pay cut due to continued furlough days, and there were lay-offs (as far as I remember).  The T-10’s loss of an hour per day became permanent!!  This unfair!

Three.  I have made a new request for public records, which I’m told will be completed by mid December.  My apologies for not doing it sooner!!  I asked for the 555 Franklin admin salaries for the years 2011-12, 2012-2013, 2013-14, and 2014-15, and will analyze them to see who got pay raises and if the number of positions increased, and share what I find out.

Four.  During bargaining, the UESF team was advised by researchers from the CFT and CTA, our state affiliates.  At the UESF assembly meeting, someone requested that this financial info be shared with the UESF membership, and the leadership replied that they had to put getting the ballots out first, before posting the information.

Ballots before information!

What UESF members want (info from three sources):

1. Bargaining survey of Nov 2016 –  I worked on this as an area rep.  We tried hard to get as many UESF members personal emails as we could, so that they could respond electronically.  The election committee and the UESF office staff made it a priority to update the database ASAP.  (Unfortunately, based on my experience as an area rep,  this year UESF is not updating the database well at all).  In addition to mailing them out, efforts were made to get the paper surveys to those UESF members without emails on file.  Leadership of UESF decided to keep the results of the survey secret, with the rationale of not revealing their hand to the district at the table. Executive board members got to see it briefly during a meeting.  In the open response section UESF members made thousands of comments, but I’m not sure anyone besides Lita took the time to read them.  So who knows what our priorities were!
2. UESF Listening Tour of 2015– UESF staff, officers and volunteers had open ended conversations with members at over 60 school sites, and the results from 30 of those sites was compiled into a report.  UESF members have four clear concerns:  A) affordability (need a pay raise),  B) Implementation of Safe and Supportive Schools resolution and student discipline (SFUSD needs to provide the resources to carry out this mandate properly instead of just putting it back on individual teachers), C)  Special Education staffing and support (SFUSD needs to put more resources into these programs), and D) workload issues and growing expectations and duties placed on educators.
3. Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) Close the Gap Coalition Town Hall, May, 2015:   Participants chose three priorities to improve schools.  This meeting was part of the community stakeholders input into the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) which is how California distributes money to local school districts.   A)  A para and teacher in every classroom,   B)  A safe alternative learning space for students, C)  A family engagement plan including time for educators and parents to develop relationships.

1.   A larger pay increase

2.   Real contract language on special education staffing and services that provide tools for classroom educators to use to defend services for students.

3.  Real contract language on restorative justice and support for students that provide tools for classroom educators to fight the school to prison pipeline.

4.  Real contract language that provides tools for classroom educators to address ever-increasing duties and expectations placed on them.

… add your own …

1.  Oakland Educator’s Association – bargaining team sends out a one-question survey, the “Question of the Week” to the membership, to inform the decisions that the BT are making.  If UESF did that, they would have asked the membership for guidance on salary demands before dropping them.   I was told that OEA members simply went to the BT and asked for it, so its easy to do and quite possible.   Here is the link to OEA website; scroll down to 10/18/2017 to see a post about a “Question of the Week”.
2. Fresno Teacher’s Association has groups of union members in the room during bargaining as observers who then return to their sites and talk about it. 
   

   For example, groups of SpED teachers are in the room when something about SpED is being negotiated.  Many nurses unions do this.

3. Chicago Teacher Union does it a different way.  The executive officers do the negotiating, but bring any decisions out to the Executive Committee (equivalent to our EBoard) for discussion and approval before making a decision.  This would have been nice!
4. Concord Teachers Association (Massachusetts) open bargaining strategy is described in this article.  Their first step was to find out what matters to the members.  UESF did exactly this with the Listening Tour two years ago, but it doesn’t seem to have informed our negotiating very much.  According to the Listening Tour UESF members’ top concerns were: affordability, special education staffing and support, real implementation of Safe and Supportive Schools Resolution and student discipline, and the growing expectations and duties.