By Zander Sherry
The Huntington Beach Unified High School District (HBUHSD) and the District Educators’ Association (DEA), or the teachers’ union, have been working to develop a new employment contract for over a year since the expiration of their old one. The employment contract covers the pay, benefits and working conditions of union members over a specified period of time.
On Nov. 4, 2022, the two parties reached a tentative agreement for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years after a process of FactFinding and mediation. The agreement included a 4.5% salary increase retroactive to the 2021-22 school year with a 1.5% bonus, and a 6.0% salary increase for the current school year with a 1.5% raise scheduled for February of 2023.
The next step for the two parties is to hold general meetings, and for the agreement to take effect, each party needs to vote to ratify it. DEA held their meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 15, and the voting window for all union members is four days.
Even when a contract expires, all aspects of the contract are carried forward until a new contract makes it through the negotiation process and both the DEA and the HBUHSD Board of Trustees ratify it.
The last contract ended June 30, 2021, and since then, the bargaining teams for the DEA and the district have gone through several attempts to agree on a new one.
The negotiating team acts on the priorities of union members in areas of salary, benefits, working conditions and things covered in the employment contract. Typically, before the end of any contract, the negotiating team drafts language and works with the district to assess budgets and work towards a new contract.
Negotiation process, starting in October 2021:
The DEA bargaining team met with the district bargaining team for the first two rounds of negotiations in October 2021, and in both meetings, a point of concern for the DEA was the substitute teacher shortage. The DEA requested more information on the shortage in order to “propose effective measures to address the issue,” according to a DEA after-the-fact memo, sent out to members of the union.
Last year, the district cut the hours of negotiation from the typical 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to shorter hours of 3 p.m. to 5 p.m, according to the after-the-fact memo. The memo also attributed the district’s reasoning to the substitute teacher shortage.
At the time of publication, HBUHSD has not replied to Baron Banner’s request to corroborate the information from the teacher’s union memos.
Because the district limited the hours of negotiation, in October, the DEA foresaw that two hour negotiation sessions would prolong the negotiation process. The bargaining teams were set to meet next on Dec. 7, 2021, for a third round of negotiations.
However, another memo from the DEA detailed that four days before their scheduled third negotiations meeting, HBUHSD canceled the meeting and did not respond to the three replacement dates that the union proposed.
Negotiations continued in February, nearly four months after the last meeting, and the district countered the DEA’s proposals, so no agreements were reached to change contract language or to improve communication between the two parties.
Nevertheless, the union expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of district response, as no agreement was made to establish clear communication or a time frame to gauge the additional proposals that the DEA had planned.
“Union leadership has met with resistance from district leadership on just about every point of discussion,” DEA building chair and Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) teacher Stephanie Palmer said. “This creates the impression among DEA members that we are undervalued and unappreciated by district leadership.”
Additionally, DEA’s memo wrote about the failure to establish clear communication in their second after-the-fact memo.
“We remain far apart on what we understand to be ‘reasonable’ timelines for two way communication,” the DEA bargaining team wrote in their memo.
In the fourth meeting, on March 10, 2022, DEA’s after-the-fact memo details that the union negotiating team had four new proposals. The proposals regarded pay and salaries for various groups in the district, including a 6.95% increase in salary for members of the union, and were guided by the district’s second interim budget report, which came out two days prior. The report stated a district income of $235,335,994 in total revenue, a number that is reflective of findings listed in the DEA memo.
Jeff Larson, FVHS teacher and representative for the DEA bargaining team, commented on the amount of money reported in the budget.
“There’s more money coming down this year than ever in my entire career,” Larson said. “And they have not changed their offer to us, reflecting any of that new money.”
Negotiations continued on March 30, at which the DEA modified their proposed salary increase “in an effort to move towards consensus and [to] allow the district programming flexibility,” DEA bargaining team wrote in the fourth memo.
The DEA declared an impasse at the sixth negotiation meeting, after an unsuccessful attempt to bring a third party mediator. Previous contracts between the DEA and the district were settled with a state-appointed mediator.
The proposed salary increases from both sides remained the same, and the impasse was certified by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). The PERB appointed a state mediator to set up a mediation session with the intent of reaching an agreement on the contract.
In April, the state mediator offered ten possible dates for both parties to declare their availability. According to the sixth memo, the DEA picked eight of those dates and the District picked one. Because the two parties’ availability did not match up, no agreed date was reached, and the PERB assigned a new state mediator to come up with a new set of possible dates.
Regarding the eight days the new mediator provided, DEA wrote that they put forward complete availability, but to no avail, as the district declined availability for the rest of the dates, and no meeting could be set up before the end of the 2021-2022 school year.
The district has not responded to Baron Banner’s request for comments, or to corroborate this claim.
On May 11, 2022, the state mediator, the DEA and the district settled on a mediation date of June 21, 2022.
After the confidential mediation process, the DEA wrote in a June 22 memo that the district sent a proposal with a retroactive salary increase for the 2021-2022 school year, as well as a separate salary increase for the coming school year. The impasse process continued and on Aug. 10 the parties met with the state mediator again, but no agreement was reached in either of the meetings held over summer of 2022.
Because of this, going into the 2022 school year, a fact-finding phase began, where on Nov. 3, a three-person panel took in points from both sides separately, and made a recommendation for a settlement. The panel suggested a tentative agreement based on the presented points.
Deputy superintendent Carolee Ogata sent an email on Nov. 4 to members of the union about the agreement, and since then, DEA has made plans to discuss and vote on it.
While teachers are glad that the negotiation process is nearing an end and that health and welfare were maintained, some feel that their salary increases fall short.
“This barely covers the increase in inflation since the last [cost of living] adjustment,” FVHS teacher Cory Nelson said. “It’s a nice increase, but it’s not really a raise”
The cost of living adjustment is an increase made to salaries meant to counteract inflation each year. The California Department of Finance measures a percentage of the annual increase in cost of living, which is used as a factor in determining how much funding goes to school districts.
“[The salary increase] just kind of goes along with the cost of living increase,” FVHS teacher Julie Chaicharee said.
School districts, in turn, are responsible for deciding where to allocate the money in negotiations with union representatives, and to come out with a new contract every few years in the case of HBUHSD.
“I believe the teachers’ union goes in with good faith, and I would hope that the district does the same,” Chaicharee said.
The voting window, which closed Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, allows all teachers to vote to ratify, and the next step is district board approval.
The DEA posted their FactFinding Mediated Tentative agreement on their website, and DEA president Shawne Hume addressed the board in the November board meeting, announcing the agreement and the now open ratification process. She also stated plans to get board approval at the next meeting.
“I’ll be back next month to hopefully get that on the agenda and recommend that you approve it,” Hume said to the HBUHSD board of trustees.
With the current contract, going through ratification, set to expire at the end of the 2022-2023 school year, DEA and district teams will need to start negotiations for the next contract.
“The contract ends in June, so we’ll be right back at it soon,” DEA president Shawne Hume said when addressing the district board in their November meeting.
