11/20/204 - Follow the Yellow Brick Road - Off to Fact-Finding We Go!

ACE met with our PERB appointed mediator today for approximately 15 minutes. Although the mediator met with the district for much longer, the district did not make further movement. Although we are disappointed in the outcome, this was not a surprise to the bargaining team or ACE leadership.

The mediator shared that she plans to release us to fact-finding, which starts a timeline that leads to the presentation of facts and testimony before a 3-person panel.  More information on this process will be shared with members soon.

The district seems unaware or unconcerned about the impact of their failure to come to an agreement.

If you have waited until now to join ACE - it’s TIME!  www.cta.org/join 

Save the date for an ACE Lunch Meeting before the next Psych Meeting on 12/11, time and location TBD.

11/07/2024

After a l-o-n-g day in mediation, the state-appointed mediator asked the ACE Bargaining Team to consider preparing a “final mediation proposal” for the district bargaining team to present to the school board in closed session on November 13th. We want to be transparent and share everything we talked about today, but the process of Mediation is confidential. We can say that our team was able to brainstorm some interesting new ideas.

The Bargaining team thinks that the following two options are the most likely to appeal to the Clovis Governing Board. Before we send a proposal for the Governing Board to consider, we want to hear from you. Which of the following two options can you support? (Click here to take our survey)

• 3% across the salary schedule + BE READY TO SHOW UP at the Board meeting on November 13th. (Wear BLACK!)

• Cheapest option for the district
• Consistent increase for any unit member

• Drop 1 step + add longevity steps at years 10, 15, 20, 25, 30

• Provides raises for the majority of unit members
• Addresses our platform to provide a more competitive beginning salary

We are scheduled to meet again on November 20th.

Thank you for all of the support from our ACE colleagues today!

10/15/2024

Impasse

It came as no surprise to your bargaining team that the district presented their Last, Best, Final as status quo with only clarifying language changes. Despite FOURTEEN very short bargaining sessions the district did not make any movement from their initial salary proposal with the exception of a 3% increase in summer school salary. This small change impacts very few members and is still not at our starting hourly rate. ACE Psychs/MHSPs repeatedly requested full day bargaining sessions and were consistently given 2.5 hour timeframes, which significantly slowed down the bargaining process.

We made the decision to file jointly for impasse. What does this mean? We feel that the district will make no more movement and negotiations will no longer be productive without the assistance of a mediator. PERB will review our submission for impasse and make a recommendation on how to move forward. Examples might be: to return to the negotiation table or assign a mediator.

What can you do to show your support?

Join ACE today! Strong union numbers provide power when we go into mediation.

Attend the October 23rd Board Meeting. Be there by 6:10! Reach out to community members, friends, and teachers, etc. who have a vested interest in making our District better in supporting students in mind, body, and spirit! Prepare a compelling 2-minute speech to let the Board and community know we are standing strong! We are at a critical time in the bargaining process and your presence is REQUIRED for a strong show of unity.

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Rachel, Anna, AnaLisa, Scott, Mandy, and Melissa)

9/30/2024

Last, Best, FINAL

This is it! Today we presented our Last, Best, Final Offer for Article 9 - Salary, Appendix H - Staffing Ratios, and Appendix C - Salary Schedule. What does this mean? We do not feel that we can make any more movement with bargaining. It’s up to the district to accept or reject our offer. It’s up to our members to

The District countered today with strike-outs to all proposals for salary increases with the exception of summer school, which was still significantly below our Step 1 hourly rate. The District also struck out increases in staffing to FLS, PALS and MHSPs. We did agree to clarifying language regarding site base time. This was already in the contract; however, there was confusion on the District side for which students were included in base time. We are waiting for confirmation from the district on additional bargaining dates. We have offered seven dates during October and early November.

URGENT!!! We need you to attend the luncheon on Wednesday, October 9th. Be on the lookout for an Outlook invite from Cy for the luncheon. Also, mark your calendars for the October 23rd Board Meeting. Even if you are not comfortable speaking, show up to support and bring a community member.

9/24/2024

Standing Strong

Today your Bargaining Team presented all unsettled articles (Salary, Staffing, Hours of Employment) for district consideration with the hopes of coming to a resolution today. Our proposals are reasonable, easily affordable, and benefit our students.

Next bargaining date is Monday, September 30th. Wear green in solidarity.

What can you do?

1. Leave your site and attend lunch at the PLC on October 9th before the Psych Meeting.
2. Start arranging childcare for the October 23rd Board Meeting. Be there by 6:10! Reach out to community members, friends, and teachers, etc. who have a vested interest in making our District better in supporting students in mind, body, and spirit! Prepare a compelling 2-minute speech to let the Board and community know we are standing strong! We are approaching a critical time in the bargaining process and your presence is required for a strong show of unity.
3. If you are a FLS or PALS School Psychologist, check your email and fill out the Jamboard from Mandy! Make sure to share with your teachers.

9/16/2024

Salary, Staffing, & Scheduling Flexibility

Although bargaining was scheduled to begin at 1:30pm, ACE was asked by the district team to caucus due to members running late. Their intent was to work on Article 7 (Hours of Employment) and Appendix H (Allocated FTE). Bargaining finally began at 2:27pm, almost one hour into our session. Your ACE Bargaining Team presented Article 9 (Salary) to the district with a proposed increase of 3% across all steps, specialty stipends, daily/hourly rate for summer school, and a retroactive raise.  Last time we met, the district asked if we considered total compensation so we came prepared with a presentation about total compensation. Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs are dead last when compared with nine neighboring districts until Step 8 where we finish in 8th place.

The District returned with a counter for Appendix H and Article 7. They struck out every increase in allocated time on Appendix H. They did concede that site base time will include SDC students and non-SDC students (no preschoolers). Rachel will be reaching out to sites that have borderline numbers to talk about next steps. During our last Bargaining Session we proposed 186 duty days with the same salary schedule. The district reverted to an earlier proposal for Article 7, requiring 193 days and reintroduced language to remove flexibility regarding extra duty days.

Are you asking how you can make a difference? Show our solidarity and join ACE/CTA! www.join.cta.org 

Wear Black in solidarity on September 24th!

9/10/24

8/23/24

August 24, 2024: Happy Bargaining Day!

 First off, thank you, thank you, thank you for all the shout outs, emails, videos, goodie bags, and Jamba Juice that we received this week! The ACE Psych/MSHP Bargaining Team continues to fight for better working conditions for you and better learning conditions for our students! Your words of encouragement and support are greatly appreciated by your bargaining team!

On Friday, we met with the district for 2 hours and 45 minutes of bargaining. Although we continue to ask for full days for bargaining, we were given a 3-hour time frame.

 The District provided a response to Appendix H: AR 4000.5: Staffing Ratios, which struck all recommended increase time proposed by ACE. When asked to review their proposal, no reasons were given for keeping the same amount of time despite your ACE Bargaining Team voicing the unit's concerns.

 When asked for the district's plan to support programs (specifically FLS and PALS) with the growing numbers of students and behaviors, the district explained BCT may be contacted for behavior support in programs and students receiving special education services. The District stated they are working on spreading the word that BCT may support students on an IEP. The District also stated program staff are receiving behavioral training provided by BICC at the beginning of the school year; therefore, extra psych time is not warranted to support behavioral management/training to staff.

 Based on your responses to this week’s survey, ACE offered a Salary Proposal (Article 9) for a 3% increase and the elimination of the first three steps on the salary schedule. This proposal would make Clovis starting salaries competitive with neighboring districts and allow us to attract and retain highly qualified Psychs/MHSPs and improve job satisfaction and morale for all. We agreed to keep the current stipends for longevity but continue to advocate for additional stipends. Your ACE Bargaining Team led a great discussion about the recruitment and retention of quality psychologists.

 The District’s final proposal of the day was the language for Article 9 without the salary schedule. They struck our retroactive language and our plan for a 10% repayment plan for circumstances when members are overpaid.

 As we go into this final stretch of bargaining, we cannot stress the importance of being more visible with your support of ACE and your bargaining team. The best way to show your support is to make sure you have joined ACE/CTA.

 We have offered the District nine dates for future bargaining and will let you know our next bargaining date.

 V/r,

 Your ACE Bargaining Team

8/15/2024

Welcome back to a new school year! The ACE Bargaining Team met with the district team Thursday afternoon. After a lot of discussion, the ACE Bargaining Team made a decision to try a different seating arrangement in the bargaining room in an attempt to reduce the adversarial tone of bargaining and increase the ability to have open and collaborative conversations. At the District’s direction, we quickly reverted to a more traditional seating arrangement (district team on one side and ACE team on the other), but the conversation about moving to a more positive, open, and transparent bargaining style was hopeful.

The District responses to our June proposals (Article 9 and Salary Schedule) did not meet the idealistic tone of the hopeful conversation:

• ACE proposed a 3% salary increase. The district proposed 0%.
• ACE proposed increasing our starting salary by eliminating 3 steps from the salary schedule. The district did not accept that proposal.
• ACE proposed additional longevity steps. The district did not accept that proposal.
• ACE proposed the addition of specialty stipends to the contract. The district did not accept that proposal.

The district is still working on their proposal for Appendix H: Staff Ratios. Once we receive their proposal, we plan to offer proposals for Article 7: Hours of Employment and Article 9: Salary at next week’s Bargaining Session, scheduled for August 23rd at 1:30 pm.

To prepare for next Friday, we need to hear from you. Based on previous conversations and your survey responses from last year, we are considering several options. While the district seems to be taking a strong position against offering a salary increase, we are confident that they can offer a competitive salary to our Bargaining Unit and the rest of our Clovis educational partners. In fact, it would only cost the district about $10.5 M to give every Clovis employee a 3% raise. That’s only about a third of what our Bargaining Team has discovered in the district’s deficit budgeting (budgeting more than they plan to spend in several line items of the budget).

Your Bargaining Team wants to represent the consensus of OUR ACE bargaining unit. Please complete this survey, and attend the Psychologist/MHSP lunch meeting next Wednesday. More details on that coming! If you haven’t already, show your solidarity and join ACE now!

Your ACE Bargaining Team

Jade Edwards

Rachel Allen

Scott Berglund

Anna Lenz

AnaLisa Luna

Melissa Saunders

6/5/24

Hello Psychologists and MHSPS -

After two back-to-back days of bargaining, we’re here with an update! Here’s the latest on our negotiations:

• Article 5 - Staffing Ratios and Workload

• We presented an updated proposal on the staffing ratios that reflects the feedback from our unit to prioritize elementary base time, program allocation to increase from a half day to full day for SDC Preschool, PALS, and FLS, and the recommended addition of MHSP support at the elementary level. In addition, we recommended that allocation be provided for an autism consultant and PBIS support. See the proposed staffing ratios here.
• The District shared a presentation about funding and budget projections
• We have reached agreement on the development of a POSA Request and Plan form (see it here), which helps bring clarity to the role of a POSA.

• Article 9 - Salary

• We presented information to the District regarding our own research on district spending, incoming funds, and projections, along with salary rankings along with our counter proposal to the salary schedule.
• Our proposal includes 3-3-3 magic:

• 3 beginning steps of the salary schedule to be eliminated to make starting salary more competitive. It currently takes about 4 years of working as a psych in CUSD before you’re at the median beginning salary of our 9 neighboring school districts and we want to change that.
• 3% increase across the 5 remaining steps
• 3% longevity increase every 5 years after working 10 years to retain quality personnel

• We also proposed stipends to be available for our unit members and proposed that the summer school pay be consistent with our annual daily/hourly rate.
• See the salary proposal here. 

We are anticipating the District’s response to these proposals and are waiting to present a counter to Article 7 (Hours of Employment). Because we have not reached agreement on our work days, our start date is consistent with the current Article 7 language which is as follows:

“...psychologists and MHSP will report at least five (5) duty days prior to the first day of  school and will work the same duty days as teachers. Subject to prior approval from the unit member’s program specialist and site administrator,  the remaining seven (7) duty days will be worked either prior to the mandated start date or  after the last school, except with prior approval two (2) days may be worked on non-duty  days during the school year.”

Be sure to communicate your start date with your administrator, especially if it is before pre-institute week. At this time, we do not have a future bargaining date scheduled but will update you when we have more information.

Enjoy the last couple days of school and your well deserved summer break!

Your ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Team

Rachel Allen

Scott Berglund

Jade Edwards

Anna Lenz

AnaLisa Luna

Melissa Saunders

05/29/2024

We hope you all enjoyed your 3-day weekend and had the opportunity to reflect on the sacrifices of our military personnel on Memorial Day. Our return to work yesterday brought us back to the bargaining table with the district. We spent a good portion of the afternoon discussing Article 5: Staffing Ratios and Workload and we received a response to our staffing recommendations in AR 4000.5, which does not include any of our proposed increases for site or program allocation, elementary mental health support, or autism consult.

• Article 5: Staffing Ratios and Workload ACE Proposal / CUSD Proposal / CUSD AR 4000.5

We also received the district’s proposal on Article 9: Salary. The district’s initial proposal does not include a salary increase nor any changes to the current salary schedule (Appendix C).

• Article 9: Salary CUSD Proposal & Appendix C

We have yet to respond to Article 7: Hours of Employment as we were awaiting the district’s salary proposal. You can review the district’s most recent proposal to this article here.

Our next bargaining session is on June 4th. We invite you to bring your lunch and join us for a Psychologist/MHSP Unit meeting to review our progress in bargaining and discuss any questions, concerns, or comments you may have,as well as show your support. An Outlook invite with all the details will be sent out this week. We ask that you wear ACE BLUE with the bargaining team on this day to show your support.

Great questions coming through!

Based upon the most recent needs survey, we did make a proposal for increased staffing. It is pages 9-11 of the CUSD proposal. The District has not yet responded to that component of the Article.

(insert article link here)

Another question we received is regarding part-time status. At our bargaining session held on 04/22/24, ACE requested clarification regarding the District’s intentions regarding part-time staffing. The District responded by stating it was not their intent to have one single individual at each given site, as previously discussed, and that Part-Time status would not need to be outlined in Article 5, as it is already outlined in Article 8.

Lastly, (do we want to discuss this section publicly?)

05/14/24

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to another edition of, “Bargaining Update!”

We hope you’re all doing well and getting ready to wrap up another wonderful school year. On our end, we had a productive day of bargaining yesterday afternoon, with healthy conversations pertaining to Article 7 (Hours of Employment), and Article 5 (Staffing Ratios).

• Staffing Ratios and Workload (Article 5) ACE Proposal / CUSD Proposal
• Hours of Employment (Article 7) CUSD Proposal

Although no agreements were made yesterday, both sides were able to ask questions, which helped both sides to understand each other's perspective on these topics. We are hopeful that these conversations will lead to mutually agreeable language in the CBA. We have a few weeks before our next bargaining session with the District, so please be sure to reach out with any specific questions, kudos, or comments. We wish you all the best as the year is winding down. Take care of yourselves, and each other.

Sincerely, your Bargaining Team members,  

Rachel Allen

Scott Berglund

Jade Edwards

Lucinda Giannetta

Anna Lenz

AnaLisa Luna

Melissa Saunders

4/22/24

Happy Wednesday Psychs and MHSPs!

Thank you for sharing your input on our Hours of Employment survey - your feedback was very helpful in discerning next steps. After our bargaining session last Monday, we made progress on the following articles:

• Job Duties and Working Conditions (Article 6): signed tentative agreement for status quo.

• One of the primary reasons we re-opened Article 6 was to ensure that all unit members have access to a confidential work space when working with students. We feel confident after our conversation with the District that our contract language protects this need. Therefore, if any of our unit members continue to be denied access to a confidential workspace after requesting such a location from their site administration, please let Mandy or Shannon know.

• Hours of Employment (Article 7): we proposed that we maintain the professional autonomy we have had to complete our 193 days, with a start date of the Monday of pre-institute week (5 days before the start of school).

We continue to develop language around Staffing Ratios and Workload (Article 5) and are waiting for information from the Governor’s May Revise to move forward in articles that are impacted by finances (e.g., salary, staffing, etc.)

We will be providing an ACE Update on May 8 before the psych meeting so stay tuned for details. We will be continuing negotiations on May 13 - wear blue 💙 with the bargaining team to show your support!

Sincerely,

The ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Team 

Rachel Allen

Scott Berglund

Jade Edwards

Lucinda Giannetta

Anna Lenz

AnaLisa Luna

Melissa Saunders

4/18/24

Happy Friday Eve :)

Yesterday we had another productive session of negotiations with CUSD. We came to a tentative agreement on maintaining the status quo for Article 6 (Job Duties and Working Conditions) after having helpful conversations that make us feel confident that the existing language is appropriate in meeting our needs to complete our responsibilities with the necessary resources. The District also communicated their desire to withdraw proposals around Article 8 (Assignments), the article they sunshined at the Board Meeting in February.

After a lot of dialogue with CUSD and within the bargaining team around Article 7 (Hours of Employment), we decided that we needed your input to move forward with confidence. As such, please complete this 3-question survey about our duty days: Work Days/Hours Survey. We are bargaining again on Monday so we appreciate you providing your input by end of day tomorrow if possible.

We will update you after our negotiations on Monday (wear black 🖤 to show support) so you have the latest bargaining info. Please reach out with any questions or input to your bargaining team or executive officer - Cy Hiyane.

Sincerely,

The ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Team 

Rachel Allen

Scott Berglund

Jade Edwards

Lucinda Giannetta

Anna Lenz

AnaLisa Luna

Melissa Saunders

4/9/24

Happy Tuesday, Psychs and MHSPs!

Monday was our first day of negotiations for our 2024-2025 CBA. Earlier this year, ACE and CUSD “sunshined” the proposals they planned on opening:

• ACE - Article 5 (Staffing Ratios and Workload)

• CUSD Counter Proposal to Article 5

• ACE - Article 6 (Job Duties & Working Conditions)

• CUSDS Counter Proposal to Article 6

• CUSD - Article 7 (Hours of Employment)

• ACE Counter Proposal to Article 7

• CUSD - Article 8 (Assignments)
• BOTH - Article 9 (Salary)

After agreeing on ground rules, we started sharing proposals, with new team members on both sides of the table! Check out the links above to see the proposals from Articles 5, 6, and 7. Articles 8 and 9 will be discussed in future negotiation sessions. We continue to collaborate with unit members and utilize your survey input to guide proposal language as we move forward. Our next bargaining session is scheduled for April 17 - wear green in solidarity with your bargaining team in honor of Mental Health!

Thank you for those of you who completed the survey sent out yesterday morning - please complete the survey as soon as possible if you haven’t yet 🙂

Thanks for all your support,

The ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Team

Rachel Allen

Scott Berglund

Jade Edwards

Lucinda Giannetta

Anna Lenz

AnaLisa Luna

Melissa Saunders

03/05/2024

Hello School Psychologists and MHSPs! Your bargaining team wanted to provide you with a few brief updates regarding what’s happening around the District.

Bargaining: Your bargaining team has requested annual financial information from the District regarding anticipated budget and finances. This information will allow us to have a thorough understanding of what money is available, and how it is being allocated.                 For those of you who are available, we will have an ACE update/Lunch on Wednesday March 13, @ 12pm. We will meet upstairs in the Tech Building (same location as Psych Meeting, which starts at 1:30), to discuss the priorities for bargaining this year.

Classification Study: The district is currently conducting a survey connected to the Classification Study. All employees are allowed to participate, but it is most relevant for job classes where the job description and relative pay don’t line up with the actual duties performed. This mostly applies to classified positions. Fortunately, we negotiated our own job description and pay last year and we have the ability to adjust both through bargaining every year. ACE has a representative in the reclassification conversation, Mandy Chevoya, and she shared with us what she has learned. As the bargaining team, we do not believe that it is necessary for School Psychologists or MHSPs to participate in the reclassification or the survey, but you are welcome to look into it yourself. We will continue to monitor the process and we’re hoping it will work well for our classified colleagues. If you have any questions, reach out to Mandy at mkulrich87@gmail.com. She will share a quick update and answer questions at our ACE meeting next Wednesday at the Tech building, 12pm.

Autism Consultation Team: Earlier this year, ACE supported a grievance filed by Tamara Soemali against the district because of the elimination of the Autism Consultation Team (ACT) position, which she has supported for 17 years. Unfortunately, the District chose to leave the role unfilled and unsupported this year. Fortunately, we reached the final stage of the grievance process last week. With the help of an experienced mediator, we reached a settlement that works for both ACE and the district. ACE would have preferred that the role not be eliminated in the first place, but one outcome from the Grievance Panel is that we will now negotiate the ACT position for next year. In addition, the district acknowledged that they involuntarily transferred Tamara in accordance with our Collective Bargaining Agreement. Moving forward, we will seek member input regarding the best ways to structure staff to support students with Autism.

2/6/2024

Hello Psychs and MHSPs!

Your Bargaining Team has been hard at work reviewing your survey results and sunshining proposals. We are sunshining Article 5 (Staffing Ratios and Workload), Article 6 (Job Duties and Working Conditions), and Article 9 (Salary). The district sunshined late Article 7 (Hours of Employment), Article 8 (Assignments), and Article 9 (Salary). We want to hold the district accountable for following the Collective Bargaining Agreement and so are filing a grievance for submitting their Sunshine Proposal after the mutually agreed upon deadline of January 31st.

We will be holding a lunchtime update prior to the Psych Meeting on February 14th. There are a lot of important issues that we need to discuss. Please come and be part of the conversation!

ACE Bargaining Team (Rachel, Jade, Anna, Scott, Lucinda, Amy, Melissa, AnaLisa)

8/17/23

Welcome to a new school year Psychs and MHSPs!

We hope that your summer was a time of rejuvenation and respite and that you are entering this new year with a renewed sense of purpose! Your ACE Bargaining Team wanted to reach out and encourage you as we enter into a new year with a new contract to support our unit and the valuable work we do! Since we have lots of new psychologists on our team this year (yay!) we want to make sure everyone knows where we’re at with our contract, how to access it, and who to reach out to if you have any questions. As this is our first contract ever, we expect there will be bumps along the way and we want to address them as best we can.

• Where we’re at:

• Our contract was ratified in June 2023 and included staffing and salary adjustments for this school year, so we will not be re-opening any articles until we begin planning for the 24-25 school year around January.
• We completed a membership drive in June and also held a new member orientation on Friday with our new hires. We will do so again after our remaining psychs are added to the team to ensure every unit member is familiar with the contract and has the option to sign up for ACE membership.

• Regardless of whether or not you are a dues paying member, you benefit from the contract that was ratified; however, dues-paying members get to participate in votes related to the contract, get access to legal support, and additional benefits ranging from better disability insurance to discounted rates for theme parks and rental cars! Most importantly, being a dues-paying member is the best way to show your overt support of our unit as we continue to negotiate important issues that impact our team now and in the future. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know here!

• Our contract:

• Our contract spans 19 articles that address everything from our job duties, work hours, staffing ratios, evaluation process, assignments, salary, benefits, grievance process, and more.
• One of the biggest benefits of having a contract like we do is the clarity we have about procedures related to our positions that promote transparency, equity, and accountability.
• An overview of each of the articles can be found here - please familiarize yourself with the contract so you know the protections and protocols in place to support you.

• Your bargaining team:

• The ACE Bargaining Team is currently made up of the following members - please reach out to any one of us if you have any questions or feedback related to our contract:

• Rachel Allen, Scott Berglund, Jade Edwards, Ryan Elison, Cy Hiyane, Trish Orr, Bernadette Rodarte, Melissa Saunders, and Amy Kilburn.

If you are interested in taking on a role to support our unit either as a potential bargaining team member or support squad member, please let us know here! We welcome your participation and input!

We look forward to our first year as an ACE unit!!!

6/30/23

Happy Summer!

You might have noticed that the retro check is a month early!

05/31/2023        

Happy Wednesday colleagues (hump DAY!) –

Here are a couple of quick updates:

• Our First Contract Ratification

• The meetings are going well – it’s been great seeing so many of you and sharing our excitement about our first contract!
• If you haven’t had a chance to vote:

• Thursday – insert info here
• Friday – inset info here

• Vote counting – we will be doing that at the CTA office (5330 N Fresno St, Fresno CA 93711) and everyone is welcome to come observe or you can watch online at this link.

• Lunch meeting to learn about  member benefits! Save the date!

• June 13th 11:30 - 1 pm
• Location still being nailed down – we will update you and send an RSVP form to ensure that we have enough lunch for everyone 🙂

• POSA positions and org chart

• We are aware of the contents of Kris’s email and are speaking with admin to get clarifications on some concerns. We hope to resolve this issue collaboratively and constructively.
• During bargaining we clearly stated that the job/purpose of the POSA position was x, y and z AND that they are members of our bargaining unit.
• Therefore, CUSD cannot just unilaterally change their work. If we cannot resolve this informally with CUSD, we will be consulting with the CTA legal department about our rights and next steps to enforce our contract. We will of course keep you all updated about this important issue and appreciate those of you who already flagged your concerns to us - good work!

Sincerely,

ACE Bargaining Team  

05/22/2023

Mondays are for Mediation

And it’s a WRAP on bargaining!! After 30 bargaining sessions beginning in April 2022, and our mediation session going from 9:30am-9:30pm, your ACE bargaining team is proud to report negotiations have concluded. Thanks to the assistance of Jun Payoyo, a conciliator-mediator with PERB, ACE and the district bargaining team were able to come to a tentative agreement on the final three articles of our HISTORIC first contract. After a long day of work, agreement was reached on Staffing Ratios and Workload, Salary, and Grievances.

• Salary:

• We agreed to a 13.75% pay increase for the 22-23 school year, with retroactive pay as of July 1, 2022! We are now at the median relative to neighboring districts and have exceeded the ECC’s recommendation that was made earlier this year. (Assuming ratification by both parties, all employees who work through the end of the 2022-2023 school year will receive the retroactive pay. Retro checks will be issued no later than July 31st, 2023) Tentative Agreement HERE
• We were also able to solidify a 3.5% pay increase for the 23-24 school year, with an additional “me too” agreement for any pay increases beyond 3.5% that are given to any other employee group(s).  

• We are excited about knowing in advance that we will continue to see a pay increase for next year without having to go through a lengthy bargaining process like we did this year.
• See our new salary schedules, including the 13.75% and 3.5% increases.

• Staffing Ratios and Workload:

• We agreed to a “meet and consult” process, which is a legal term for a process where the District will have to go beyond “surface bargaining” and truly consult with us regarding staffing changes and the impact those changes have on our staff and students.
• For the 23-24 school year, no part-time psychologists will be moved to alternate sites/programs.
• See the Tentative Agreement HERE

• Grievances:

• We were able to meet in the middle with a grievance panel as a new Formal Level 4, which will occur after a meeting with the associate superintendent does not result in a satisfactory outcome. The grievance panel would involve a mediator, a union representative, and a district representative, and would result in a written recommendation for how the grievance should be resolved. The recommendation will be shared with the Governing Board and will require a majority board vote to make a final decision.
• See the Tentative Agreement HERE
• The grievance panel is free, impartial, and allows the board to have a resource to guide their determination when resolving grievances.

The process today was insightful and encouraging, and we feel very good about what we accomplished today for our unit members and for our students. We were so encouraged by the incredible turnout of psychologists that came to the PLC during their lunch to show their support of the work we do! We got lots of honks and waves and it was awesome :)

We will now begin the ratification process, where our contract will be voted on and then be implemented (pending board approval)! That means we will be reaching out to each of you as part of a membership drive, so we can gather all dues paying members to participate in a vote to ratify the contract! We’re hoping to present a ratified contract at the June 7th board meeting so we can wrap this up by the end of the school year!

5/19/23

Preparing for Mediation

Happy Friday everyone!

Monday is an unprecedented day where we enter the mediation process with the District bargaining team in an attempt to reach a final agreement on our remaining three articles - Salary, Staffing, and Grievances. Thank you to those who have provided input on our survey, which has helped guide us in preparing for Monday’s session. If you have not yet provided your input, please do so by completing the survey here.

To make the most out of our mediation session, we are asking for public shows of support from our unit members as well as educators and community members throughout the district. Here are some ways you can rally behind the bargaining team as we advocate for our students and our department - remember, this is your future contract, and we want it to be as meaningful as possible:

1. Join the list of educators and community members who have signed the petition to the school board to show their support of our efforts of mental health advocacy: Sign here!
2. Wear green on Monday! The mental health and wellness of our staff and students has been the guiding compass throughout this process, and we’ll be wearing green as demonstration of this commitment on Monday.
3. Participate in the mental health rally at 12:15 at the PLC - Mandy has sent out an email about this activity so you have all the details. The more visible we are, the better!
4. Can’t leave your site? Consider sharing your thoughts and support with the District bargaining team on Monday via email - share your input about district, site, staff, and student needs that impact our psychs/MHSPs. Your personal experiences and convictions are valuable!

1. Who are the District bargaining team members to email - Norm Anderson, Theresa Pafford, Robyn Castillo, Michael Johnston, Barry Jager, Sue Rutledge, and Roxanne Braswell
2. Please also cc any emails to kilburnamy@gmail.com and Dr. Corrinne Folmer

We are excited to engage in this process on Monday and hope to come to an efficient and meaningful agreement as a result!

Have a fabulous weekend,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

5/3/2023

Bargaining Update – wait, what bargaining?!

Although we were scheduled to meet with the district on Monday, May 3, we had notified them last Thursday that we felt we were at impasse – meaning that there was nothing left to negotiate since both sides had declared their bottom line on the remaining three issues {Salary, Staffing/Workload, and Grievances}. They subsequently agreed and let us know they saw no need to meet.

Instead, we jointly filed a declaration of impasse with the PERB to proceed to mediation. We have selected a mediator and are scheduled for our mediation session on May 22nd. We’re in regular communication with district administration on moving this process forward.

In the meantime, we are still discussing with the district a side-letter agreement for the roll-out of the staffing changes for next year. We’ve let them know that we disagree with replacing part-time positions at comprehensive sites with full-time positions, and we don’t see a need to make unnecessary changes for next year. Continuity and reliability are important for our students! Here’s the latest counter-proposal we sent to them.

We will continue to keep you updated as we proceed through the mediation and impasse processes.

On Wednesday, May 10th, we will hold our regular unit meeting at the PLC from 12:30-1:30. This is an important opportunity to be part of the conversation so please make every effort to be there.

4/27/23

Happy Friday Eve :)

We concluded another round of bargaining today, as we navigated the final proposals for our remaining 3 articles {Staffing Ratios/Workload, Salary, and Grievances}. Here’s where things stand:

• Staffing Ratios and Workload (Article 5):

• We presented our final proposal on staffing ratios, continuing to advocate for changes in staffing ratios that impact comprehensive sites and programs to be negotiated with the bargaining team. Any staffing ratio changes that pertain to self-funded, wellness, alt ed, or district-wide positions would be subject to consultation with the bargaining team. (See our final proposal here)
• We also presented a proposal for a side letter that outlines a process where ACE and the District would work in tandem to facilitate staffing and manage changes for next year (see it here). The District responded with a counter-proposal to this letter with the guiding philosophy of moving toward having a single full-time psychologist at every site, as well as how staffing and changes would be determined (see it here). We made it clear that we didn’t share this philosophy and think that a full time equivalent would be able to meet site and district needs, but will be able to counter on Monday when we meet again.

• Salary (Article 9): On Monday we gave the district our bottom line of 14.5%. Today, the district gave their final counter-proposal of increasing all steps by 13.5%. (See the District’s salary proposal here) Even though the movement is good, we know that the difference between what we proposed and what they’re offering is a small amount for the districts’ budgets (0.014% of their budget) and a significant difference to the salaries that could be attracting and retaining the psychologists that our students need ($1,000 per year).
• Grievances (Article 14): The District presented their final proposal, striking the option of arbitration and having the Governing Board be the final step in the grievance process. In addition, they limited the parameters for mediation, wanting it to only be an option between level 3 and level 4, and would include the mediator, the grievant, and a district representative. (See the District's final proposal here)

At the end of our bargaining day, we discussed the process for impasse, since we have given our last, best, and final offers on the above articles, and the District has done the same on salary and grievances. We offered to file jointly and shared options for local mediators. The District is wanting to share their input on Monday, at our next bargaining meeting, as we continue to discuss the Side Letter to how staffing ratios will be rolled out for the 23-24 school year. For more information on what the impasse process looks like, check out this resource. We will also be sharing the latest on bargaining as well as what’s next at our upcoming ACE Update on May 10th before the psych meeting. You can also reach out to any of the bargaining team members at any time to get more information.

Join us in solidarity by wearing GREEN on Monday - the wellness of our staff and students is always a guiding priority and wearing green is a visual reminder of such. In addition, Monday is the first day of Mental Health Awareness month!  

Enjoy a fun rodeo weekend - Yeehaw!

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

04/24/23

Good afternoon colleagues,

Check out our theme song for the day :) We Ain't Settlin' (Yet)

Here are the updates from our bargaining session today:

• Tentative Agreement - We reached a tentative agreement on Term of Agreement (Article 19), which outlines the terms of our contract and includes how many articles and how often they can be opened between the terms of our three-year contract.
• Salary (Article 9) - We received the district’s counter proposal to salary which yielded a 13% increase to steps 1-5 (formerly only steps 1-2 would receive a 13% increase). Steps 6-8 remained at 12.5%. ACE provided our counter proposal with an equitable 14.5% increase across all steps. We communicated to the district that this is our last and final proposal regarding salary. -Thank you to all that provided input in the Salary Threshold survey as your voice drove our decisions in bargaining this article today.
• Grievances (Article 14) - We accepted the district’s language regarding mediation as part of the grievance process, but continue to propose that arbitration be the final step. We presented this as our final offer, as it represents the feedback of our unit. You can read our final proposal here.

Other updates and info:

• Staffing changes

• We know that the psych meeting last week was distressing and confusing for many, including the bargaining team, as comments were made regarding staffing changes and the desire for a 1.0 school psychologist to be at each site. Thank you for sharing your questions and concerns. As a result, we were able to obtain an agreement from the District to pause admin conversations and decisions regarding staffing. We were also able to use your feedback to have a productive conversation with the District about how to move forward on this issue.
• While we have reached consensus in bargaining regarding staffing ratios, we have not yet reached tentative agreement on Article 5. The events at and following the psych meeting were helpful in facilitating a discussion between the ACE and District bargaining teams about how staffing changes would be rolled out, especially concerning initial changes like those that may be ratified in our contract. As a result, we are looking at a “side letter” that outlines considerations and a process for staffing sites and programs. We plan on reviewing this letter with the District bargaining team during negotiations on Thursday 4/27.
• We understand that the district has a right to staff positions; however, we want to advocate for our unit as to how changes in staffing may impact sites and staff, with a desire for outcomes to be as desirable as possible. Our goal is to work alongside district admin to create a plan that is mutually beneficial and still satisfies other components of our contract, such as the vacancy process outlined in Assignments (Article 8).
• For those that have asked questions about how a full-time psych could be assigned to each site, we want to make it clear that the bargaining team has always supported and vocalized the possibility that more than one individual could satisfy the staffing needs of the site, such as the combination of two part-time individuals. Our side letter proposal identifies certain priorities such as consistency of maintaining the incumbent psychologist as a primary consideration when fulfilling staffing needs. Again, we plan on sharing these ideas with the District on Thursday. If you have specific concerns you would like addressed, please send them our way.

• Salary Survey

• We want to thank you for providing your input on the salary threshold survey - there was an exceptional turnout with responses and we have a clear path forward to know how best to represent our unit regarding compensation. Due to the sensitive nature of the salary survey as we continue to negotiate with the District, we will not be sharing results at this time. We have a high regard for transparency, and although we cannot openly share outcomes of the survey right now, we are open about our reasons for waiting until after the contract has been ratified to share the results with everyone.

As always, you can reach out to any one us with questions or input at any time. We look forward to our next session of bargaining on Thursday, and invite you to wear black in support and solidarity. The first three people to reply to this email with a picture of themselves wearing black with a note of support on Thursday will receive a five dollar starbucks card and ACE swag.  

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

As we prepare for bargaining in the next two weeks, we felt as a team it was important to update you on a couple of things: (Audio recording of this update can be found here for those who want to listen and not read)

• Regarding the information presented by Kristen during our psych meeting addressing staffing ratios and a “full time psychologist being assigned to each site.”

We are pleased to share with you that after many of us voiced concerns during the meeting AND with follow up from your bargaining team with an email to CUSD admin, Kristen announced that she was hitting pause on the phone calls and any implementation of new language and policies prior to ratification of our contract. We are currently working on a “side letter,” in collaboration with the district, in regards to staffing for the 2023-2024 school year. However, we still feel it is very important to discuss with the district how the decision was reached to even bring this topic up last week without first reaching full agreement on both the article and the full contract itself and with an interpretation of the article that was never discussed in bargaining. As we have mentioned before, attempting to implement any aspect of a potential contract before reaching final agreement on the contract is an incorrect interpretation of the bargaining process. The parties could have agreed to an immediate implementation, but that was never proposed. The ACE Bargaining Unit will address this issue with the District at our upcoming bargaining session on Monday to identify the intent behind the discussion last Wednesday and to help ensure these types of unilateral decisions are not made in the future. We will report out to you on Monday after our bargaining session the results of our discussion with the District.

• Bargaining next two weeks –

• Over the past year of bargaining, we have made a huge amount of progress on winning strong language in our first contract and have TA’d on a vast majority of our issues from the ACE bargaining platform.
• In the past, CUSD has had a practice of dragging issues out and delaying until we just give up (such as the QIT process that many of us found so frustrating.) As a group, we decided that we aren’t willing to tolerate that any longer- and we’ve been successful in winning on issues we care about. We aren’t going to let them do it again here.
• Timeline and next steps – if parties aren’t able to come to agreement at the table, either party can declare impasse and begin the mediation/fact finding process. This process has very strict  timelines (read a quick explanation here) and we anticipate completing them on or before the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year.
• The quickest path to winning on our final issues requires that we all participate in more public actions in order to persuade the CUSD Board to vote for a fair and equitable contract that will support our profession and our students well being. With only a handful of articles yet to be resolved, the end of negotiations on our first contract is fast approaching.  The ACE bargaining team has worked diligently throughout the bargaining process to engage all Psychologists and MHSPs in determining our bargaining priorities. Through surveys, one-on-one conversations, and in-person meetings, we all have played a part in shaping our first contract.

Together we are successfully educating our colleagues in the classrooms, the governing board of our district, and our Clovis community about the critical role Psychologists and MHSPs play in supporting the lives of our students and ensuring our district is living up to its legal obligations.

• Unfair Labor Practice Charges

• GAP and Personal Expression Policy –

• ACEs position has always been consistent – CUSD must follow the law. We attempted multiple times to engage in meaningful discussion and asked the district to cease and desist implementing the new policies while we worked on a resolution – CUSD did not.
• We filed charges yesterday (linked here) – and again, we hope that we can still work this out and withdraw the charges.
• Impact on bargaining – will it delay? No - especially if we do head into mediation etc – the timelines are strict. Charges do not delay or limit our ability to bargain a contract if the district changes their behavior

• What can you do so we continue to make progress.

• The bargaining team is addressing our current bargaining position and seeking everyone’s input to determine our final position on salary. If you haven't done so already, please take a moment to fill out the survey on salary. Our input is needed to develop our final position.
• Everyone needs to be informed and prepared to act in support of winning a fair contract.  Every step of the way, our input has guided the positions our bargaining team has taken at the table. Our participation in solidarity actions has pushed the district to move in our favor. Together we can achieve our goal of winning a fair contract that supports our profession and our student's needs. Hold the Dates -

• Monday - April 24th, Bargaining Date
• Thursday - April 27th, Bargaining Date
• Monday - May 1st, Bargaining Date
• Weds - May 3rd, CUSD Board Meeting 6 pm – we will need to be out in force to either celebrate progress in bargaining or to take some public actions to ask the board to make management move to settle a fair contract 

ACE Bargaining Team

Good Evening Colleagues:

For many of us, the information presented by Kristen during our psych meeting regarding staffing ratios and a “full time psychologist being assigned to each site” was extremely upsetting. The plan, as explained, was not EVER agreed upon by (nor even contemplated) by us. From our perspective, what was shared today was flatly wrong.  Although Kristen is correct that we are close to an agreement on staffing ratios, all TAs are conditional upon reaching an agreement on the entire contract (and then voted on by all union members). Ironically enough, the reason we have not reached agreement on this article is that we are proposing that any considered changes to staffing ratios first be brought back to us to be negotiated upon as opposed to CUSD’s position that simply consulting with us on the proposed changes will suffice. Today proved our position is correct.

A unilateral change to our working conditions like that which was shared this afternoon could have always happened in prior years and we would have had no recourse or way to effectively stop it. Thankfully, we now have the right to demand that CUSD follow the law and work with the ACE bargaining team, on behalf of our entire unit, to best implement our legally binding contract. Fortunately, since we are months away from a new school year we have some time to fix the situation.

• Kristen and/or Carrie are planning on reaching out to all of us beginning tomorrow, April 13th. Since we are still addressing the issue of staffing at the bargaining table (our next session is 4/24), ACE believes this is a potential violation of law by attempting to circumvent the bargaining team and process.
• We will be informing the district tomorrow of our legal position and concerns as well as demand that they not engage in these conversations.
• Therefore, we don’t believe you have an obligation to speak to them about this issue.
• If you are directed to take the call, you should comply but feel free to let them know that this conversation is unlawful and a unilateral change to a mandatory subject of bargaining. Also, if you are directed to take the call, we encourage you to take notes about what is said during the call, and if you desire you can share them with us so we have a pulse on what is being discussed so we can properly represent our unit.
• If you are comfortable having an honest conversation with them about your assignment preference, feel free to do so.
• Whether you have a conversation or not, please rest assured knowing that we are continuing to negotiate issues related to staffing. And, since we are now a union, we will address any such unilateral changes.

Have a good evening and we will keep you updated!

March 23, 2023

Happy Friday-Eve Colleagues!

It seems hard to believe but today marked our 27th day of bargaining with CUSD! It’s been a long and, at times, exasperating process, but through it all we’ve felt resolve, determination and pride in representing all of us and the amazing work we do on behalf of our students!

Today, we continued to make progress on our final four articles:

• Salary (Article 9): 

• We began negotiations with a proposal for a 15% increase across steps, while addressing the following -

• A 15% increase would take us from the bottom to the middle compared to nearby district salaries across steps
• The discrepancy of total cost  between the district’s proposal of 12-12.5% and our 15% increase equates to less than $300,000, which we believe is within the district’s ability to afford
• Back in December, the ECC recommended a salary adjustment for psychs/MHSPs that was still higher than what the District has offered to us in the negotiation process
• Since the market study, which is guiding the ECC’s recommendations regarding salary adjustments, neighboring districts have seen an average increase of 9%, making us further behind than when the market study was conducted

• The district countered with a 13% salary increase at steps 1 & 2, and a 12.5% increase at the remaining steps, followed by a lengthy discussion regarding what “competitive” means and our basis for determining a competitive salary. We also asked the district why they have not yet proposed an offer to match the ECC recommendation and are continuing to delay the bargaining process.
• See the latest proposals here.

• Staffing (Article 5):

• We are continuing to push for real involvement in future changes to staffing ratios through a consultation or negotiation process.
• See the district’s latest proposal here.

• Grievances (Article 14):

• Our last proposal outlined a 5-Level process for resolving grievances, with the Governing Board at Level 4 and arbitration at Level 5. We also proposed the option of a mediator to support the resolution of grievances at any step.
• The District’s counter once again eliminated arbitration as a choice for employees, maintaining that the Governing Board should make the final determination. However, they are in agreement with the proposal for mediation as an option during the grievance process.
• See the latest district proposal here.

• Term of Agreement (Article 19):

• This article outlines how long our contract is valid and what articles can be reopened before the end of the contract.
• See the latest proposals here.

At this point, it is vital that we all come together and have a conversation regarding our priorities. Trish Orr will be sending out an outlook invite for an urgent bargaining meeting on Tuesday.  

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

March 20, 2023

Welcome to a new week! We hope that your weekend allowed for some well-deserved rest or time doing something fun!

We wanted to update you on the town hall that transpired last Thursday (3/16), in which three board members (Dr. Fogg, Yolanda Moore, and Deena Coombs-Flores) joined in addressing the status of mental health in CUSD.

We want to begin by stating what an incredible opportunity it was to engage in open dialogue and discussion with board members - it truly was monumental. A retiree in attendance said that never in her decades-long career with CUSD had she experienced a group of educators participating in an open conversation about the needs of CUSD students with members of the board. Typically, the board is informed about the world of special education, mental health, and school psychologists in the following ways: administration reports, public comments during board meetings (limited to 2 minutes), or media reports. Never before have we had a full 90 minutes to meet with the board about the topic of mental health, which is the primary concern within our unit. As a result of your feedback on the input form, the following goals were established for our time together:

1. Share insight into the school psych/MHSP world (e.g., what we do, how our job has changed, and current challenges)
2. Review current means of supporting mental health and opportunities to improve our service model through our partnership with the board 
3. Open new lines of communication between educators and the board 

About 50 educators, primarily a mixture of psychologists, MHSPs, and teachers, attended the town hall. A presentation was developed to begin the session (see it here), with the intent for dialogue to transpire upon its conclusion; however, the board members were engaged throughout the presentation -asking questions, clarifying statements, and commenting on the content. Thus, the dialogue transpired organically throughout the presentation.

By the time the presentation concluded our allotted time was also at an end, but two board members were able to stay and continue the conversation about next steps. Those in attendance from our unit consistently reported that they felt the board members were able to understand our role, our experience, our hearts, and our current challenges in a way that has never happened before - and for that, we consider the town hall a great success.

With all new experiences comes learning and an opportunity to grow and do better. Here are some of our takeaways for how we want to improve as we go forward:

1. Intentional language. The name “Town Hall” is typically used to indicate a forum for broader members of the community to share input or questions about a central topic. Since our meeting last week was primarily between educators and the attending board members, a different name may have made the intent more clear.
2. Norms. Board members and educators share a passion for education and CUSD students. This passion can take the form of intense and expressive emotions. Future dialogue exchanges should focus on respectful communication, and procedures for managing escalating moments will be clarified.
3. A focus on solutions. While this was intended to be a part of our discussion, we did not have as much time as we planned to engage in this conversation. The primary feedback from those in attendance was that it was essential for the board members to understand our role and the current educational context in order to generate meaningful solutions. However, future conversations will be geared toward productive next steps in addressing student mental health needs.
4. Navigating negotiations. ACE educators believe that the bargaining process is essential in moving toward effective solutions. While the board will ultimately have to approve our contract, and therefore we believe it is important for them to understand where we’re at in the process and how we arrived at the proposals, the board does not participate in bargaining directly. So, when we talk about staffing, salary, and job duties, it’s important the board be aware of those issues without concern that they are taboo topics. We can work toward a common understanding with them on the best way to address these topics in future conversations or even set ground rules for how these conversations can take place so all parties feel comfortable in the process.

We thank those of you who attended for taking your precious personal time to participate in such a momentous experience. We look forward to sharing next steps once they are determined, and welcome your feedback and questions in the meantime.

In solidarity,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

March 13, 2023

Happy sunny Monday!  Here’s an update from bargaining today:

• We felt the warmth of the sun and your positive energy and thoughts! We signed TAs on management rights and job duties & working conditions! We’re particularly pleased with the language regarding our job duties & working conditions because:

• Our job description more accurately aligns with what the role looks like on a day-to-day basis
• We will be guaranteed access to a confidential workspace with a means of securing confidential documents
• We will be guaranteed access to testing materials needed to write legally defensible reports

• Grievances (aka what happens when we believe our contract has been violated)-

• A majority of our unit felt that the governing board would not be an ideal final step in the grievance process.
• Our previous attempt to compromise on whether the Board or arbitration would be our final step resulted in a proposal to allow unit members to choose whether they went to the Board or arbitration at Level 4, but this was struck out by the District.
• As a result, we countered with a new compromise to represent our unit’s concerns but make progress - we recommended that the Board be Formal Level 4 in the process, with Arbitration as Formal Level 5 (a new level). We also included language about the option for a mediator to support at any level when mutually agreed upon – and made it clear that going to arbitration is a significant undertaking that requires a decision by the full Association because of the costs and impacts to the full unit. We are hopeful that this addresses the District and the unit’s desires in regard to grievance proceedings.
• Click here for the latest proposal

• Staffing 

• We are continuing to address the language surrounding staffing ratios, in particular what changes the district can make to existing ratios with/without the negotiation process.
• We believe that the bargaining process was beneficial to our unit, the district, and our students, and we want to protect our right to be included in changes made to staffing ratios in the future.
• The District’s current proposal allows us to be consultants when changes are made, but this is not the same as requiring the negotiation process to transpire when changes are proposed.
• Click here for the latest proposal

• Salary

• The District did not have a proposal for salary during today’s negotiations but we indicated our desire to receive an electronic proposal as soon as it’s available so we don’t have to wait until next Thursday.

We’re continuing negotiations next Thursday, March 23rd, but in the meantime we have some important opportunities for you to help move things forward in a meaningful way:

• RSVP and attend our School Board Town Hall on Thursday, 3/16! An Outlook invite was sent out on Friday, 3/10 by Xochitl. Please RSVP here to let us know whether or not you can attend. The dress code is GREEN for mental health awareness!  It is important that we make a big showing at this event, as we have an audience of 3 members of our governing board. This is our time to discuss the needs of our department in today’s educational climate.

• Please complete this survey to submit questions and input in advance so we can make sure we don’t waste a minute of this important opportunity to speak directly to our School Board representatives.

Thank you and hang in there during this March Madness! You’re amazing!

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

February 24, 2023

It’s Friday and time to enjoy your weekend! Here’s an update from today’s bargaining to carry you into the weekend!

• Staffing -

• Guess what y’all?  The district indicated to us that they agree with the staffing ratios we last countered, which increases equity throughout the district on how much time a psychologist is on a given campus based on enrollment and student caseloads. We will also have 3 psychologists on special assignment that will support assessment needs, provide mentoring and consultation, and fill in for LOAs. This was a huge win! We are still waiting on signing a tentative agreement on the article; however, this was a monumental win to one of our core articles that impacts our work-life balance the most.
• Check out the staffing ratios here.

• Salary – 

• We made a counter proposal to the salary schedule, including stipends available specifically to our unit, which reflect the change in salaries throughout the valley from 21-22 (when the Market Study was conducted and when we first started bargaining about salary) and the current standards in the 22-23 school year. On average, neighboring districts who were already paid about 8-26% higher than us, saw an increase in pay around 9%, and we want to ensure our proposals are competitive with those changes.
• See our latest proposal here, along with the salary comparisons that we shared with the district to advocate for a competitive salary.

• Job Duties -

• See our latest proposal here. See the description of job duties for school psychologists here.  See the description of job duties for MHSPs here. We continue to advocate for school psychologists and MHSPs to have clearly articulated duties and responsibilities that reflect the essential and important work we do.  

• Grievances -

• We provided a counter proposal on Grievances, which reflected your survey input that was over 90% in favor of either having a choice (Governing Board or Arbitrator) or arbitration as the final step when a grievance is made. We stressed the importance that our unit members want options if Level 4 is reached in the grievance process.
• Grievances are a new concept to us and some of you have asked questions about it. Check out this link which answers some of FAQs.

We are getting closer to the end of this long journey and are so pleased with the conversations we’re having with District admin about these final articles and the tentative agreements we have reached so far. Thank you for your support, for sharing your input, and for being a part of this incredible team of educators!

Have a great weekend,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

February 23, 2023

Good Afternoon Colleagues - Happy Friday Eve! It’s time for an ACE bargaining update!

• We love getting pictures from educators around the district sent to us on bargaining days – check out our newest collage!

• Today we made proposals on two issues of importance to us:

• Salary: BIG WIN! The District’s latest proposal included retroactive pay beginning July 1,  2022 at a 12% increase across all steps. It took us a long time to get to this point, but take a deep breath and enjoy the moment!  We’re planning to counter tomorrow to continue progress on this article, but we are excited about this positive movement! See the District's proposal here.
• Staffing: We presented a counter-proposal that we think is a compromise between our unit’s desire to increase elementary base time and the District’s idea of Psychologists on Special Assignment to support with needs that impact our ability to effectively complete our duties. See our proposals here and  here.

• In addition to these proposals, we are working on a counter proposal regarding Grievances (which is how our union contract language will be enforced.) CUSD has taken the position that the final decision maker should be the CUSD school board while we proposed that a unit member could choose between the school board or an independent arbitrator to decide on an employee grievance. We need your input! Please make sure you complete the short survey sent by Jade so we can be ready for bargaining tomorrow afternoon!
• Today is the first day of back to back bargaining days with CUSD. A reminder that for those of you who want to do a deep dive, all proposals can be found here. If the title of the article says “TA’d” we have reached agreement at the bargaining table and will be bringing that language to a vote of all dues paying union members in the ACE Psychologist/MHSP unit when we ratify our contract.
• Join us tomorrow in wearing black - take a picture (grab a friend!) and send it our way to show  your support! We look forward to updating you on more progress tomorrow afternoon!

Xoxox, ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

Happy Friday and Hooray for a three day weekend!

• BIG NEWS We have reached a Tentative Agreement on an issue of major importance to us all – health benefits! In every survey we have done, maintaining our benefits as designed by the Employee Benefits Committee (EBC) has been a high priority. We are also pleased that we have been able to negotiate representation on EBC for one of us (and the right to increase those spots if our bargaining unit grows in proportion to other employee groups.) Read the TA here!

• Other proposals and counter proposals from today –

• Salary - the District countered with a 12% salary increase with retroactive pay beginning January 1, 2023. This is definitely movement in the right direction, but we will continue to address the need for retroactive pay to be applied for the entirety of the 22-23 school year.
• Staffing Ratios & Workload - we’re making progress on a staffing concept that would increase the amount of time a psychologist is on a campus, allowing a psych to have 5 days of time on each campus, with program support embedded into those 5 days according to the program allocation. Any programs that exceed a 1.0 FTE assignment would be covered by additional psychologists. The District continued to propose a School Psychologist on Special Assignment assigned to each area to provide support for high caseloads, mentorship of new psychologists, and any other needs that may arise within areas. We also discussed stipends to address special projects such as bilingual assessments or special interests such as PSW consultation. Here’s a link to the district’s proposal.
• Grievances (Contract Enforcement) 

• Yesterday, we gave the district a proposal that we thought would be beneficial to everyone - specifically, individual bargaining unit members can choose either the CUSD governing board or an independent, professional  arbitrator to decide the result of a grievance.
• Today, the district rejected this idea and continues to propose that the CUSD governing board will be the only option when it comes to resolving disputes related to our contract.
• Why this matters to us – while we appreciate our School Board and their input, we believe it’s important that our unit members have the option to go to an unbiased, neutral arbitrator who is skilled in understanding contract language and educational law when it comes to grievances.
• We will be getting your input on this specific issue so be on the look-out for that opportunity next week.

• As we continue to make progress in bargaining, we wanted to take a minute to recap what we have been able to accomplish together:

• 23 days of bargaining - Whew! It’s been intense but as a bargaining team we have counted on each other and all of you to keep us energized and motivated
• 18 (EIGHTEEN!) articles have now been tentatively agreed upon at the table! These include issues like:  assignments & vacancies, how we are evaluated, professional development, our work day & work year, workplace safety, and more. Once we have reached agreement on the remaining articles we are excited to hold meetings where everyone can review everything and ask questions. The final step will be twofold: 1) deciding to become a dues-paying union member and then 2) participating in the vote to ratify the contract.
• Culture change/shift - when we began negotiations, it was rather nerve-wracking for us as a team to present language and field questions from the management team. Over the course of this journey we feel that we have developed a collaborative relationship with admin where our voice is heard and results in action and not just in words. We feel more confident speaking on behalf of our unit , and see admin as equals when it comes to bargaining.
• Visibility and Pride - More and more of us feel proud of what we are accomplishing and pushing through frustration or fear to become public and proud as a union. We’re sharing photos, asking questions and engaging in healthy dialogue, speaking at board meetings, repping ACE swag, and have a robust Support Squad!

• Next Steps - Six articles remain:

• Salary
• Management Rights
• Staffing Ratios & Workload
• Job Duties & Working Conditions
• Grievances (Contract Enforcement)
• Term of Agreement (how long the contract lasts)
• We’re also wanting to continue the discussion regarding the Personal Work Space Board Policy

• We’ll continuing bargaining next week on Thursday (wear blue) and Friday (wear black)

February 16, 2023

Good Afternoon Esteemed Colleagues –

• Teachers and Psychs/MHSPs took pics and shared them with us – what a boost to see all the amazing support for Psychologists and MHSPs in bargaining a good contract!
• Salary

•  We began today with a discussion about redesigning our salary schedule (both sides have made proposals that change the number of steps). Through our network of experts at CTA that are supporting our efforts, we recognized some very technical legal issues with changing the number of steps.

• Ed Code 45028 requires a uniform recognition of experience and training in the salary schedule for certificate educators.
• Previous court decisions have made it clear that changes to the salary schedule that result in educators with the same amount of experience and training receiving different pay are unlawful.

• We presented this concern to the district and made a proposal that we initially thought would:

• a.) Fix the problem and
• b.) Still have a big enough raise to attract and retain quality staff with retro-active pay.
• After further discussion, all parties agreed that in order to make sure we are in compliance with state law, it was best to stick to an 8 step schedule without adding or eliminating any steps. The district promised to provide a counter proposal tomorrow with that structure and we will share it to everyone.

• Staffing

• Knowing that our current staffing for the 2022-2023 school year is not meeting the needs of our students, we had asked the district to provide an explanation of how their own staffing concept would apply to next year. They responded today that they envisioned adding four more positions (4 FTEs) to what they described as the current 73 FTEs (including vacancies).
• Our proposal for 2023-2024 adds base time to elementary schools, intermediate, and high schools and allows for more support depending on student enrollment at each site. We proposed one day per week of MHSP support at each elementary site to meet the social, emotional, and behavioral needs that our students deserve and that we can’t meet with our current staffing model. We advocated for our special teams and added a Bilingual Assessment Team allocation.

• Contract Enforcement (Grievance Procedures)

• ACE has been proposing that a neutral arbitrator would be the final decision maker regarding grievances and CUSD has been proposing that the CUSD Governing Board would make the final decision.
• In order to move towards resolution we did some outside-the-box thinking and proposed that it would be up to the individual grievant to choose between using a professional arbitrator or the CUSD board to make a final decision regarding a grievance.

• Management Rights

• We presented a counter proposal that we think makes it clear that the district has certain rights under the law but also ensures that our contract language is respected. Here was our proposal today.

• Tentative Agreements aka “TAs”

• We reached agreement on Article 16 Professional Development link is here. TA’d agreements will take effect when the entirety of the agreement is ratified by both parties.
• Some folks thought that staffing was off the table or had been settled. In order to be more transparent/clear, we reorganized our materials a bit. Please know Staffing continues to be a topic of conversation as we work towards meeting the increasing needs of students while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
• All articles are here. If the folder says “TA’d” in the title then we have reached agreement with the district on that particular article. So far we have reached a tentative agreement on 16 articles, which is great progress!

We are in negotiations again tomorrow – send us more pics of you and your teacher colleagues at your sites - we will be wearing green in support of mental health!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Melissa Saunders, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

Xoxo

ACE bargaining team

February 9, 2023

Happy Friday Eve,

It was great seeing so many of you for lunch and a bargaining update yesterday. Your enthusiasm is contagious and we carried that enthusiasm into bargaining with us today. We look forward to seeing you next month before the Psychologist staff meeting for another update.

Here’s news from today’s bargaining session:

• Let’s talk $$$. We had a very serious conversation about Article 9 (Salary) and made good progress. The district proposed a 10% increase to our salary schedule. While we’re not thrilled they did not offer retro pay in their proposal, nor is it the 13% increase to our salary schedule discussed in ECC (see it here), we recognize the forward progress in this area. Our counter proposal will include retro pay to July 2022 as we continue to work towards creating a working environment that will enable us to hire, develop, and sustain a high quality workforce. During our discussion, the District stated that they are working to support outcomes with increased staffing and salary as a result of our negotiations, and we are building on that common ground as we move forward with our remaining key articles.
• Peace out! We have reached a Tentative Agreement on Article 7 (Hours of Employment)! We now have the flexibility to make up to a 30 minute adjustment to the start time and end time of our 8 hour duty day to accommodate scheduled meetings. Read the Tentative Agreement here
• Who’s the boss?! The district also presented counter responses to Article 4 (Management Rights), Article 10 (Health and Wellness), and Article 14 (Grievances).
• Work in progress! ACE presented counter responses on Article 6 (Job Duties & Working Conditions) and Article 16 (Professional Development). Our goal is to create a job description that accurately reflects our essential duties and working conditions that allow us to support students to the best of our ability. We came to an agreement on Professional Development and plan to start our bargaining session next Thursday with a Tentative Agreement.  All articles are available to view here.
• Earlier this week, it was brought to our attention that an article in the Fresno Bee contained inaccurate information about bargaining. According to the Fresno Bee article, “The district’s current budget includes the 7% salary increase previously approved by the board in June for all other employees. The union has not accepted that raise.” per Barry Jager. Please be aware that this information is not accurate. The district has not offered ACE the 7% during negotiations. Although ACE offered to accept the 7% while we continued to negotiate for a more competitive salary, the district denied this request. We have made a formal records request to view the statement that was made in an attempt to correct the error.

We are ready to continue this movement next week during our back-to-back negotiations on Thursday and Friday of next week. On Thursday, please show your support by wearing ACE swag and the color blue. On Friday, rep the swag and the color green! Enjoy your extra day off on Monday 😀

Sincerely,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

February 3, 2023

Congrats on making it through another week :)

We wanted to keep you informed of some of the latest happenings regarding our contract negotiations.

• First, we had a strong presence at the board meeting on Wednesday, with support from parents, community members, teachers, and two district psychs speaking to the board about the need for CUSD to prioritize mental health through bargaining in good faith in the areas of staffing and salary. Following the public comments, two board members spoke to the work we do and the importance of supporting our unit. If you weren’t able to be there, we encourage you to watch the board meeting (linked here) - the comments made on our behalf were moving and inspiring. What we do matters.
• Today, Barry and Theresa asked to meet with a small group of the ACE bargaining team to discuss options to support assessment needs in the district resulting from the shortage of school psychologists. We asked questions to understand their informal proposals, and will continue to discuss them during future negotiation sessions in the coming weeks. However, we continue to stress the importance that the district shows tangible evidence that they are willing to address the core issue: salary. Now that we have taken benefits off the table as a factor impacting the finances available to address the outcomes of our negotiations this school year, we want to see serious proposals when it comes to establishing a competitive salary that will attract and retain quality professionals in CUSD.
• As a result of the NDA for ECC members being rescinded, we are aware that salary schedules for school psychs and MHSPs were presented and discussed during at least one ECC meeting. We have requested this information from the District so we can ensure that future proposals are being bargained in good faith.
• As we move into the final stages of bargaining, we are confident that we can reach an agreement that meets the needs of the district and our bargaining unit – and will best serve our students. We’re hopeful that the district has heard the urgent needs we shared with the board and will meet us with a sincere desire to address them.x
• Finally, we are holding an informational lunch meeting on Wednesday at 12:30 (PLC, room 5). We’ll provide a more thorough update and invite you to ask any questions you have or weigh in on your thoughts or ideas regarding the bargaining process. Please RSVP via the Outlook calendar invite so we can plan accordingly with sandwiches from Deli Delicious. We look forward to seeing you there.

In the meantime, have an amazing weekend!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

January 27, 2023

Happy Friday Psychs and MHSPs!

You made it to the end of another week and we made it through another round of negotiations. The bargaining team was hustling today to make sure our time was spent as productively as possible (all with the help of Lauren’s yummy brownies - thank you!).

• For access to our proposals, click here.
• Thank you to those of you that responded to our survey earlier today - the highlights and themes from your input was shared with the District bargaining team with the intent of starting a meaningful discussion of how to address staffing needs beyond the District’s proposal of the area staffing concept. The overall consensus from your feedback was that we need to address both the mental health needs of our elementary students through MHSPs as well as increasing psych base time to respond to all the special education, behavior, and social-emotional needs on campus. We shared this opinion at the bargaining table, along with a rationale to support it. We want to engage in collaborative discussions about solutions to the ongoing and intensifying needs that are experienced daily - and we know that the previous District proposals aren’t going to cut it. As a result, a small work group of members from both teams met to have a productive conversation about staffing. The dialogue will help us develop a counter proposal that moves us closer to agreement, while still representing the needs of our students.
• The District presented a counter to Article 7 (Hours of Employment) that reflected an understanding of our need for flexibility in our start/end times during our work day. We countered with minor clarifications to the language and presented it to the District.
• We presented a counter proposal to Article 10 (Health and Wellness), reflecting our willingness to work with the Employee Benefits Committee (EBC) to continue to be the decision-making body for our health benefits for the 3-year duration of our current contract.  Our goal is that by accepting the EBC system, we’re eliminating any additional potential costs associated with our contract that would interfere with a robust salary increase. Our counter included a proposal of having one psych and one MHSP representative on the EBC and one unit representative on the Standing Benefits Committee (SBC), a smaller group of employees who filter information and presentations, which is then ultimately presented to EBC, providing us with the ability to review and address  potential changes to our benefits.  
• Our day ended with a discussion on salary, and we shared the latest 2022-2023 salary schedules from districts within an hour of Clovis (see the salary comparison here). We know we are well below our neighboring districts in pay, which is a huge factor in recruiting and retaining quality employees to serve our students. We continually stress the importance of needing an immediate and competitive change to our salary schedule.
• Another huge win!!! ACE submitted a letter to the District regarding the requirement of ECC members needing to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA). As a result, the District stated that they will no longer be requiring employees to sign an NDA when participating on the ECC! This means more transparency on the important topic of wages now and in the future!

Today marked the last of four scheduled negotiation meetings in January. February will be just as busy and productive a month as we have five negotiation meetings scheduled with the district, starting on February 9th. In the meantime, here are ways you can show your support:

1. Come to the CUSD Board Meeting on Wednesday, 2/1/23, to show your support of psychs and MHSPs in the District.
2. Share your thoughts during the open forum portion of the Board meeting - we already have several who are ready to speak and your voice is important!
3. Keep talking, keep repping the ACE swag, and keep doing an incredible job of supporting our students - you are invaluable!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

January 23, 2023

Happy Monday fabulous colleagues,

First, we want to say how fun it was to see those of you who were able to come to our working breakfast this morning. The support and camaraderie is palpable and exciting!

Today we took another step forward in bargaining a solid contract.

• We were able to reach a tentative agreement (TA) on Article 12 (Evaluations), finalizing an evaluation form and rubric that are consistent with the CASP and NASP domains relevant to the work of school psychologists. See the Evaluation form and rubric here. 
• We also countered on Article 14 (Grievances), advocating for the impartial process of arbitration rather than the CUSD School Board being the final step in resolving grievances when a breach of contract is suspected. Grievance proposal
• We also received a counter on Article 16 (Professional Development).
• Click here to see all proposals

During the caucus, our team spent time drafting a 3-year phased plan to address staffing ratios and workload  and presented this idea to the District team. This conversation included sharing the results of an intermediate school SEL screener which showed the overwhelming need our CUSD students have for social-emotional support - this highlights the pertinent need of hiring qualified staff to prevent as well as respond to the needs of our students. The District team continued to talk about the previously shared “area staffing concept” as the answer to our problems. This is the same concept that was shared earlier in the year, which our unit weighed in on via a survey and felt would not address the needs we have. The District presented a draft with more details regarding time allocation for comprehensive sites and programs to provide “additional structure” to staffing guidelines; however, the document presented (see it here) basically reflects our current staffing reality and does not show  much of an effort to increase support needed to address the needs of our students and colleagues.

The District also drafted a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to begin using contracted LEPs to support LOA coverage and assessment needs while we continue to have numerous vacancies (see it here). While we appreciate this creative short-term solution to providing some relief to our unit, this will not address the long-term problem we’re experiencing. We are concerned that simply hiring outside contracted professionals without trying to attract employees by addressing salary, staffing, and workload is not truly meeting the needs that we have nor is it supporting our CUSD students who would benefit from having access to additional psychs/MHSPs to support the intensive needs they’re experiencing. We will continue to discuss the topic with the District to see how we can maximize solutions to best support our students, but we know that having a safe and trusted adult on campus for students requires having someone permanent and reliable.

We’re continuing negotiations on Friday and look forward to gathering the data from the workload analysis that you are completing this week. On Friday we’ll be wearing ACE blue and hope you’ll join us in solidarity.

Sincerely,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

1/20/23

Happy Friday Psychs and MHSPs!

We had a productive round of bargaining today, which we are excited to share with you.

• Upon reflecting on our negotiations from last week, we wanted to replicate some of the collaborative and productive conversations that took place, especially in regard to moving forward on some of our core issues - staffing, salary, and workload. Thus, instead of drafting contract proposals, we facilitated a discussion about the need for forward momentum as we prepare to hire psychologists and address the current staffing crisis.
•  We presented the idea of “Supposals”, which are informal suggestions and considerations that we openly process before we put our ideas into formal contract proposals. The district team was open to this idea and we started by giving scenarios regarding benefits; specifically, if we were to accept the EBC process as the means of determining our health benefits to various degrees (either in whole or in part), how would that impact the options for salary or staffing?
• In addition to our discussion which is still ongoing, we were also able to reach a Tentative Agreement (TA) on TWO articles - Article 8 (Assignments) and Article 11 (Absences & Leaves of Absence), with Article 12 (Evaluations) almost  there - just need agreement on the rubric.

So much of our progress today is directly connected to the support we are continuing to receive from our group of Psychs/MHSPs! The increased visibility of support, open conversations happening with colleagues, and messages of support have been so valuable. We invite  you to continue to participate in supporting the bargaining team by:

• Joining us in solidarity before our session on Monday 1/27 for high fives and breakfast burritos at 9am: Click Here to sign up!
• Participating in workload analysis project from 1/23-1/27: CLICK HERE
• Attending the Feb. 1, 2023 board meeting

For those of you wondering about the email from Barry today about the Market Study - hold fast. We will be meeting with the district team again on Monday and are looking forward to hearing the district’s response to our “supposals”, which will directly connect to salary. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend and we hope to see you Monday morning at 9:00am.

Sincerely,

Your ACE Bargaining Team (Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Scott Berglund, Bernadette Rodarte, Ryan Elison, Trish Orr, Rachel Allen, and Amy Kilburn)

01/13/2023

Good Afternoon Fabulous Psychs and MHSPs -

Today in bargaining we provided counters on Article 12 (Evaluations), and Article 16 (Professional Development), both of which are at the heart of our development and growth as professionals and which also directly correlate with the success and well-being of our students. Investing in the professional development of School Psychologists and MHSPs, as well as providing fair and equitable evaluations of our performance, aid us in being the best that we can be for our students and colleagues. We also provided a counter to Article 8 (Assignments), which is an issue that is relevant to many of our colleagues right now since several are covering assignments for open positions and LOAs.

• Professional Development Article 16

• Our Recommended Changes and Position

• We are advocating for the district to pay for all registration fees  associated with the pre-approved trainings we attend
• We are advocating for the district to pay for the CEU fees associated with any pre-approved conferences or trainings
• In an effort to plan ahead, we will be provided the opportunity to submit professional development preferences on the Climate Assessment Survey by May and this will be shared with the our bargaining unit as part of the results of the Climate Assessment Survey  

• Evaluations Article 12

• Our Recommended Changes and Position

• The previous evaluation form did not address the roles and responsibilities we perform at our school sites, our programs, and with our students.
• The proposed evaluation form and rubric aligns our job duties and practices with the California Association of School Psychologists {CASP} model for evaluating our department and ultimately provide us with meaningful feedback and opportunities for us to grow as mental health professionals.

• Assignments Article 8

• Our Recommended Changes and Position

• We want to ensure that there are parameters in place to protect employees from being required to fill vacancies via involuntary transfers or temporary coverage. Instead, we are advocating for use of an equitable process to fill open positions.
• When temporary coverage occurs, we want limitations to how long temporary coverage will last, how many times an employee can be asked to provide temporary coverage in a year, and allowing employees a voice when those parameters have been met.

We are still waiting on the District Board Policy draft for staffing ratios so that we can provide a thoughtful counter for Article 5: Workload and Case Management/Staffing Ratios.

Although salary was not mentioned today, we have several upcoming sessions that we will be able to discuss more topics.  We look forward to meeting again next Friday.  It is important to say that the mood in the room today was the most positive to date.  We are optimistic that we can carry this progress and momentum to next sessions and the most pivotal articles.  

12/19/2022

Greetings Colleagues -

It was great to see so many folks at the lunch meeting last week! Moving forward, please plan on having lunch as a unit on days when there are psychologist staff meetings - locations are TBD, but save the dates! (Jan. 11, Feb. 8, March 11, and April 12 at 12:30-1:30 p.m.)

Today we decorated the room with messages of support – an uplift on bargaining day! We were also excited to be joined by Scott Berglund, who volunteered to serve as an alternate bargaining member while one of our members is on LOA. As he was the only one who expressed interest, no vote was necessary.

Topics we discussed/shared the following proposals:

• TENTATIVE AGREEMENTS: We reached tentative agreements on two articles: Savings Clause and Dues Deductions. That brings our total tentative agreements to 7 out of 19.
• SALARY: link to proposal, salary scale, and presentation from our team to admin. We presented a counter proposal with a 12% increase, retroactive to the beginning of the year, while removing the first step as the district proposed, but adding a new 9th step. We know that our proposal today is feasible given the district’s available resources. It’s also necessary given the widening wage gap between Clovis and neighboring districts, which is making it nearly impossible to staff our department and provide the support that our students deserve.
• TRANSFERS & ASSIGNMENTS: ACE presented a listing of the number of vacancies, LOAs, and potential resignations through the hiring and edjoin postings of neighboring districts. ACE provided a counter proposal advocating for a systematic and balanced process for temporary coverage. This includes a time threshold of 90 days and ensures that the temporary coverage does not exceed 1.0FTE.
• EVALUATIONS: We are close to a tentative agreement on the evaluation process and having an evaluation that represents the work we do! Our future evaluation will align with the California Association of School Psychologist domains and standards. Our next step is to create a scoring rubric which will support our evaluators in providing us an accurate performance appraisal.
• NEW BOARD POLICY: regarding personal items displayed in the workplace

• Now that we have a union, CUSD is required to speak to our bargaining team prior to changing policies that impact our working conditions. We sent a letter to the district and, after subsequent conversations, the district agreed to bring this policy to our bargaining table, which  we were able to discuss today.
• We proposed that the personal item language – since it’s contained within the policy on political activities – should only restrict personal items with messages that involve politics. We see this as a more relevant and appropriate policy and doesn’t have such broad and vague restrictions that are found in the current policy.
• In the interim as we are working on this issue, if you are asked to remove something from your personal workspace, please notify one of us so we can keep track of the issue.

Click here to learn how you can engage and be a part of getting the district to move closer to settling a fair contract. This includes action items such as:

• Sign the letter of support to adminhttps://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvAJ53aYR3VhKnEbAANK474pqDMQwBb1zb99Mx3ejV1hyQ0Q/viewform
• Serve on a proposal subcommittee and complete a commitment card
• Bring a colleague to our lunch updates
• Wear your ACE buttons or green Mental Health Matters/ACE blue on bargaining days
• Indicate your interest on this form!

NEXT BARGAINING DATES:

Have a wonderful, restful Winter break with loved ones - we deserve it!

The ACE bargaining team (Cy, Rachel, Ryan, Jade, Melissa, Bernadette, Trish, Amy, and SCOTT)

12/15/22

Hello psychs and MHSPs!

Thank you to those of you who were able to attend our lunch update yesterday - we appreciate your desire to stay informed and ask questions. Please note that we plan on having update meetings prior to each upcoming psych meeting to allow an open forum for discussion about negotiations.

We also wanted to see if any of you might be interested in being an alternate bargaining team member if/when our current members are unavailable to attend. As one of our team members is on LOA, we are looking for someone to join us on Monday’s bargaining session, which is scheduled from 11-4pm with planning scheduled beforehand from 8:30-11. Please submit your interest on this form by the end of the day so we can hold a vote tomorrow if there are more than 1 interested unit members.

In addition, please express your interest in being a part of a subcommittee to develop proposals on our core articles (job duties, caseload, and salary) by completing this form. We are excited to hear input from more of our unit as we work collaboratively to develop a contract that supports the work we do.

Thank you again for being such amazing colleagues and working so hard day in and day out to support staff and students!

The ACE bargaining team (Cy, Rachel, Ryan, Jade, Melissa, Bernadette, Trish, Amy)

12/8/22

Hi everyone!

We are very excited to host an upcoming lunch to share the latest bargaining updates with you as well as answer any questions you have about where we’re at and what’s coming up. Please meet us at Luna’s in Old Town Clovis at 12:30pm on December 14th so we can connect before the psych meeting that afternoon. Pizza will be provided! Please RSVP via the calendar invite you’ll be receiving so we can plan accordingly! Thank you!

The ACE bargaining team (Cy, Rachel, Ryan, Jade, Melissa, Bernadette, Trish, Amy)

The ACE bargaining team (Cy, Rachel, Ryan, Jade, Melissa, Bernadette, Trish, Amy)

12/5/22

We just wrapped up a Monday bargaining session, and before we give you an update of how it all went, we wanted to acknowledge some of the meaningful and, honestly, monumental achievements that have been made through this arduous process thus far:

1. First of all, we built a union with supermajority support! Our united goals helped establish a bargaining platform that puts kids front and center, and we continue to be strongly supported by our department!
2. We are changing the culture of CUSD to be more transparent and holding our district administrators accountable. We have used our voices to talk to admin as equals. The conversations we previously had that went nowhere are now happening in a bargaining room where we have the right to negotiate the issues that matter to us!
3. Through negotiations, we have also made the following gains:

1. Vacancies will now be posted internally so all have an equal opportunity to transfer to a new assignment should they desire.
2. Part-time is protected! We have created very specific protections over the ability to have part-time psych and MHSP positions. In addition, there are now limitations on how long any reductions in part-time status can last, as well as when/how changes in part-time status can be made.
3. Our evaluations will actually reflect the job we do! Until this point, our evaluation form has only been partly relevant, but now it will reflect standard practices for school psychologists, along with a rubric that will make it really clear how each item manifests in our daily job performance.
4. We have protections to ensure the safety of our bargaining unit! The district will ensure training, resources, and clothing/PPE are provided to keep us safe while we do our job.

None of this could have happened without the strong support we have received within our department, and we are looking forward to future wins as a result of the momentum we’ve built thus far.

Now, for how things went today…

Today was frustrating. Frankly, it was insulting. Although there were points of good discussion, and the district countered on proposals that we have been anxiously waiting for, most of the counter-proposals fell far short of our expectations. (All proposals can be accessed here). First, the district countered on Workload and Case Management (Article 5) by crossing out all of our proposed language and adding back terminology that staffing needs would be made according to a board policy they hope to add (that has yet to be shared with us). Next, the district countered on Job Duties (Article 6), again by crossing out all of our language and instead insisting that our job description adequately sums up our duties and the needed resources to complete our job. We engaged in dialogue about some of the limitations and frustrations we’ve encountered with limited resources and needing to supply our own materials as a result. The district then shared their counter on Assignments (Article 8) and while we’ve made progress on this article in terms of vacancies and transfers, when we saw their proposal we were baffled with their unclear and inconsistent communication. With great effort we had a discussion about the need for involuntary transfers to have a fair and reasonable process that supports employees even in times of emergency. As a result, the district retracted their proposal to create a new proposal that reflects our input. Finally, the district shared their counter regarding Salary (Article 9), recommending a 2% increase, which equates to less than $2,000 more per step for employees upon ratification of our contract. (Less than what was recommended by the market study.) That means the district didn’t accept our proposal to give us retroactive pay for the time spent in negotiations. When asked if the district felt this increase would adequately recruit and retain quality employees the response was ”we’ll see.” In addition, they said they didn’t expect us to agree with their proposal, which causes us to wonder why they offered it. It’s a good thing we’re all trained in emotional regulation strategies because we definitely were engaging all of our deep breathing strategies to manage our strong reaction to the district’s proposals today.

On our end, we presented a counter on Hours of Employment (Article 7), following a presentation that urged the district to consider a flexible 40 hour work week. We also countered on Leaves of Absence (Article 11) and Evaluations (Article 12), where we shared updates to the proposed evaluation form.

So what’s next? We are inviting everyone to attend an informational lunch meeting at 12:30 on December 14th before the psych meeting. Lunch will be provided and we’ll be addressing where we’re at, next steps, and how you can continue to show your support as we move forward. Be on the lookout for the flyer giving more details. We all need to come together and stand strong, so please be there!

Solidarity, The ACE bargaining team (Cy, Rachel, Ryan, Jade, Melissa, Bernadette, Trish, Amy)

A clarification for everyone – under the list of achievements in bargaining (#3) – the wins spelled out in a, b, and c are all part of articles that we feel we are VERY close to agreement upon but haven’t actually finalized the language or signed. Safety HAS been signed and agreed upon by both parties. Of course, any agreements we reach at the table will need to be ratified by all of us and by the CUSD School Board.  Feel free to reach out to one of us for clarification (and come to our Dec 14th lunch meeting!) but we wanted to clear up any potential misunderstanding promptly.  

11/07/2022

Happy Rainy Monday, Colleagues!

It’s SPAW! We hope that as we work to negotiate a strong contract for our group that you were appreciated for the stellar work you’re doing at your sites and programs. Whether the support takes the form of treats, special signs, cards of thanks, or some other creative means, we hope you feel the love because you are valued and essential!

Today we spent another day bargaining with district administration. We were thankful that after our feedback about last session and how disappointing it was to spend most of our time waiting and only meeting with a limited number of the CUSD bargaining team, this week we started on time and the district had two articles ready to go - Evaluations and Health & Wellness. Michael Johnston presented some information to our team about the current benefits plan and how the Employee Benefits Committee (EBC) makes decisions regarding health benefits. While the district bargaining team is assured that CUSD’s benefit plan is the best in the land, we want to do our due diligence to evaluate alternative options (and share this information with you all) to make a meaningful counter proposal. Later, they also presented counter proposals on Management Rights and Grievances. (You can see all proposals here…we renumbered some of the articles but the topics are clearly listed). Meanwhile, we countered on Professional Development and Assignments. Important to note with Assignments is the desire to create an equitable process to address transfers, vacancies, and emergency coverage, as well as protect part-time agreements.

While we made some progress in our time together today, we had hoped that CUSD would have presented counter proposals on our core articles (such as Workload and Salary), and are still waiting to move forward on these essential issues. In addition, our ability to counter district proposals is a challenge when a vast majority of our language (which is developed through conversations at the bargaining table with CUSD admin) is crossed out as administ reverts to their original language. Thus, it can be hard to make efficient progress.

Also, and most importantly, Happy Psych Week! – We’re enjoying seeing support on social media about School Psychologist Appreciation Week and Our Proposals In Context of the Budget — as well as enjoying the amazing presentations to the board by Cy and Tiffany. You can also download some shiny ACE logos, zoom backgrounds, and digital wallpapers.

We have heard a lot of kind words of recognition but we’re convinced that the right way to show appreciation and recognition to school psychologists and MHSPs is to work with us to address the staffing shortage with competitive wages and sustainable working conditions. Let’s do it!

10/17/22

Good afternoon fellow psychologists and MHSPs!

Today we met with the CUSD bargaining team again. While we were scheduled to meet from 11 - 3, the CUSD team requested to meet at 1pm; however, we continued to wait another hour until only two of the CUSD bargaining team members were available to begin the day’s negotiations. Out of the 4 hours we had planned to negotiate today, we were only given 25 minutes of active time with CUSD to continue bargaining. During our somewhat limited time here is what we did:

• We re-ordered some of the articles so they are grouped together in a way that makes sense, but that means that some of the numbers of our articles have changed – here’s our folder of all proposals.
• We gave counter proposals on two articles: Evaluations and Management Rights

• We want to make sure that Improvement Plans include measurable goals and that we are able to have conversations with those completing our evaluations
• We want to ensure that while management has the right to make certain decisions regarding the district, that topics related to our job are bargained with us

• We informed the district at our last bargaining session that we have put all of our proposals on the table that will have an economic cost – and that we are ready to see their responses on important topics like salary, benefits, and workload.  
• We received a counter proposal for an employee evaluation that reflects CASPs 10 competency domains to review

As we continue to bargain our first contract, it’s important that our community understands that CUSD has the resources to invest in the special education and mental health services that our students need and deserve. ACE Bargaining Team Member Cy Hiyane and Support Squad Member Tiffany Masten will be representing our bargaining unit at the Wednesday CUSD Board meeting for school psychologist appreciation week. We are honored that the Board recognizes the important work we do, however we encourage district administration to pick up the pace in bargaining. As part of that presentation, we’re asking everyone to submit a quote or sentence that reflects on the following question: “What would make you feel valued and respected in our first contract?” You can share your input on this form (and yes, you can remain anonymous)!

10/3/2022

Afternoon colleagues!

Today we finished up our 4th day of bargaining with the CUSD bargaining team in the past 6 days (it’s been a bit arduous but we feel that we’ve made progress in the past week). We discussed evaluations again (we are getting closer to agreement on this issue), professional development, and proposed a new article regarding the term of agreement (how long our contract lasts and if we want to meet each year to discuss a limited number of issues like salary and health insurance). At the end of our session today, we reminded CUSD that all our proposals are now on the table and that we are, therefore, expecting and hoping to see counters for some of our proposals from this summer like workload, job duties, and salary.

We’re looking forward to meeting with you all at lunch in the next couple weeks - make sure to sign up for either Wed., Oct 5th or Thurs., Oct 14th. We really need to update everyone regarding CUSD’s suggestions/ideas for addressing staffing needs as well as get your input to formalize work hours. We are always open to discussion and suggestions on the language for our first contract and are eager to hear your voices moving forward.

We are awaiting dates for our next bargaining session but will get those to you soon! Thank you for all the support and for those that joined us in wearing black today!

Solidarity, The ACE bargaining team (Cy, Rachel, Ryan, Jade, Melissa, Bernadette, Trish, Amy)

9/29/2022

Hello Fellow School Psychologists and MHSPs!

We made it through a grueling three days of bargaining this week! Tomorrow we will take a break and then continue on Monday. We will be wearing black and hope you’ll join us!

We started our time together with a presentation to the CUSD Bargaining Team to ensure we are aligned in our goals and intentions for the bargaining process. We understand that this is a new process and sometimes uncomfortable as a result - yet it is so important that ACE and CUSD go into each session understanding our mutual needs and the goals we have in moving through negotiations. We felt like it allowed for productive and collaborative dialogue the remainder of the day and we are excited to announce that we came to agreement on three more articles - Article 3 (Association Rights), 12 (Safety), and 14 (Personnel Files)!

Other articles reviewed today were (here’s the link to all proposals…we update it as we share new ones):

• Article 7 Assignments - we discussed the process for voluntary and involuntary transfers and vacancies as well as part time opportunities, including updating the Part-Time Agreement so it is more applicable to Psychs/MHSPs
• Article 11 Evaluations - we are clarifying the forms and processes used to assess our job performance
• Article 16 Savings Clause - what happens when legislation comes out that contradicts our contract

We also shared an initial proposal on Article 9 - Health and Wellness, which outlines our current benefits and ensures our right to bargain any changes to our health benefits in the future.

Again, we can’t express how much your support and encouragement helped this week - the camaraderie is life-giving! And thank you to Janet for the delicious cookies which helped get us through the day! We look forward to updating you on Monday afternoon, and remember to be on the lookout for those calendar invites so we can get your input during upcoming lunch meetings!

Solidarity, The ACE bargaining team (Cy, Rachel, Ryan, Jade, Melissa, Bernadette, Trish, Amy)

9/28/22

Today was day 2 of “bargaining-palooza” and the start of the day was boosted with pictures of our colleagues rocking their mental health matters green attire! Remember, tomorrow is teal and purple for suicide awareness. Keep the pictures coming our way!

Today we spent several hours prior to meeting with the district bargaining team preparing an initial proposal for Article 15 Professional Development. We also worked on counter proposals for Article 11 Evaluation (including an evaluation form based on NASP standards so we can get truly meaningful feedback on our work). We also had a counter proposal on Article 16 Savings Clause. CUSD presented counter proposals on Article 3 Association Rights. The district bargaining team also had an initial proposal for Management Rights for us.

We ended our day with a victory - a signed tentative agreement on Article 2 Negotiation Procedures!

In regards to workload, staffing, and work day – we need to have a conversation with everyone to consider some of the ideas we have received from the district. Because we represent our collective voice, we think a lunch discussion/meeting is in order. Zoom meetings will be offered on 10/5 at 12:30pm and 10/13 at 12pm for those that can make either date. Bernadette will be sending out Outlook invites so be on the lookout for those!

The rest of the day was spent exchanging counter proposals with the CUSD team (folder link here).  ACE and CUSD had a lengthy conversation regarding Article 6: Hours of Employment.  ACE continued to advocate for flexible working hours while fulfilling an 8 hour work day because we know no two days are the same with our job. We are looking forward to sharing more about this conversation with you and getting your input, as we are approaching an agreement and want to make sure it supports the broad interests of this group.

We continue to make progress this week as we work collaboratively on the historic work of bargaining our first contract – and we are heartened to hear from so many of you and see pictures of psychologists and teachers across our district. Together we can win the mental health supports that our students deserve!

Xoxo

Bargaining team list

9/26/22

Today begins a week of negotiations, with bargaining happening today, Wednesday, and Thursday - we are ready to make notable progress as we move through the week. We are also so grateful for all the love and support we received from psychs/MHSPs in the form of texts, coffee, and selfies wearing ACE blue! On Wednesday we will be wearing green for Mental Health awareness and Thursday we’re wearing teal and purple for Suicide Awareness.

Today we received counter proposals from the CUSD bargaining team on Article 2 (Negotiation Procedures), Article 3 (Association Rights), and Article 14 (Personnel Files), as well as a new CUSD proposal regarding Savings Clause (e.g., what happens to our contract if legislation is passed that contradicts contract language). The ACE bargaining team provided counter proposals on Article 6 (Hours of Employment) with the goal of clearly defining our work day while also preserving flexibility.

After lunch, CUSD shared a presentation on their projected costs to implement the primary proposal we presented for workload and compensation so we could compare numbers and make sure we are on the same page with the costs of our contract. Robyn Castillo also presented a concept for area staffing and workload support that we have more questions about, but hope to get your input on as well. CUSD provided a counter to Art

icle 11 (Evaluations), and ACE will be working on creating a draft evaluation that includes the NASP criteria that more accurately reflects our job duties. We also provided counter proposals on Articles 2 and 3 and are close to coming to an agreement. Finally, we presented a counter on Article 7 (Assignments) with a specific focus on part-time contracts. We’ll upload the files as soon as possible to the folder here.

We look forward to updating you more as we proceed this week and look forward to seeing you tomorrow at Riley’s at our social hour - see you there at 4 pm!

9/1/2022

After a flurry of exchanged documents, bargaining has wrapped up for the week (all proposals are available here).

One point that we want to celebrate is that the parties are getting close to agreeing to a process for posting vacancies when they become available - that way we will be notified when a position is available and everyone will have an equal opportunity to apply to fill the vacancy. In addition, based on the incredible feedback from our department on the part-time survey, we proposed that when part-time contracts need to be increased that it be voluntary and then filled based on seniority, which was the overwhelming recommendation from you all. The district, thus far, appears to be in agreement with this proposed process.

In addition, we continued our discussions on safety, personnel files, negotiation procedures (we’re almost in agreement on this one!), Association rights, and hours of employment. The district also presented an initial proposal on managing grievances when there are perceived violations to the contract agreement. Yesterday we shared the NASP domains as a resource for employee evaluations and the district is currently working on how they might incorporate the rubric into the existing evaluation to make it more meaningful to us based on our input. All in all, this was a productive week and even though we are exhausted after 15 hours of bargaining plus all the hours of planning beforehand, we feel good about what we were able to accomplish. Our next bargaining date is September 26, and we are working on finding additional dates as well. We are motivated to keep this ball rolling!

Thank you for all the support and well wishes, and for giving your input so efficiently and thoughtfully on the survey. Enjoy your three day Labor Day weekend (brought to you by the American Union Movement!!)

The ACE Bargaining Team 

Bernadette Rodarte

Cy Hiyane

Jade Edwards

Melissa Saunders

Rachel Allen

Ryan Elison

Trish Orr

Amy Kilburn

Bargaining Team hard at work!

Don’t hesitate to contact one of us with any questions, comments or ideas. (Cy, Ryan, Bernadette, Melissa, Trish, Rachel and Amy)

8/31/2022

Good Afternoon –

Day two of bargaining this week was productive. Again, here’s a link to publicly shared proposals file so you can read and give input:

• We exchanged several counter proposals (negotiation procedures, and hours of employment) and had productive dialogue with the CUSD bargaining team. We also had more discussion with the district about  the total cost of our proposals to increase mental health staff to provide more services for students and make a more competitive salary schedule.
• We didn’t offer a counter to “Assignment Changes” because we felt it was important to get input from everyone about part-time priorities. (Please make sure you complete the survey that Jade sent out Wednesday am…and WOW 49 of us responded promptly which was extremely helpful!) We intend to draft and present a counter proposal tomorrow (Thursday)
• CUSD gave us initial proposals for “Safety” and “Personnel files” (you can find those in our publicly shared proposal file in the  Article 12 folder and the Article 14 folder)
• Finally, at the end of our session today we presented our initial proposal regarding Evaluation. 

Thank you to Celene Mendez for our snazzy green pens! We felt the love!

Ace Bargaining Team (Ryan, Cy, Bernadette, Jade, Melissa, Trish, Rachel and Amy)

8/29/2022

Good Afternoon –

Today was our 7th day of negotiations with the CUSD bargaining team. We’re meeting two other days this week (Wed., 8/31 1-5 pm and Thurs., 9/1 12-5 pm). After having such a great turnout of psychs, MHSPs, and CUSD educators advocating for ACE at the board meeting on the 17th, we noticed that we had a good representation of CUSD bargaining members at today’s bargaining session. We like to think this is a direct result of the level of importance this process has to our department. Today, we got to negotiate with Norm, Robyn, Theresa, Roxanne, David Moreno, Barry, and Michael Johnston. During the first 30 minutes, we provided the district with counter proposals on the following five articles: 2 (Negotiation Procedures), 3 (Association Rights), 4 (Workload), 5 (Job Duties), and 6 (Hours of Employment). The District was again not prepared to counter on any previously presented articles and went to caucus for over 3 hours before returning with counter proposals to articles 2 and 7 (Assignments). We reiterated the importance of our workload, assignments, and hours of employment and the impact it has on our students and our work-life balance. We expressed our frustration that they only had a counter for two of our articles. We also engaged in dialogue with district admin about salary (Article 8) and the costs involved with our proposals to offer competitive pay to our employees. While our proposals include a 4.4 million dollar increase, we believe this is a worthy cost to invest in the wellness of our staff and students, and the district has the financial resources available to make this happen.

In our effort to continue to move forward and use our bargaining time efficiently, we are planning on presenting a counter proposal to articles 2 and 7, as well as proposing article 10 (Leaves of Absence). We are hopeful the district team will come back to the table prepared for a productive session on Wednesday.

What can you do this week to help support our bargaining:

• Mental Health Matters Because…

• Take a selfie (or a usie!) and post to ACE social media (Insta, FB, Twitter)
• Talk to two of your classroom teacher colleagues about what we’re bargaining over and why it matters for our kids
• Continue to text/email your encouragement and positive vibes

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or ideas.

ACE Bargaining Team (Rachel, Amy, Jade, Ryan, Melissa, Bernadette, Cy, and Trish)

8/18/2022

Good evening and Happy TGI(almost)F,

We want to send a huge SHOUT OUT to those who were able to attend last night’s board meeting in support of ACE and the students we support. We also want to send a big SHOUT OUT to those who were there in spirit last night via your positive and inspirational texts/emails/calls.  Along with the support of several district teachers, ACE made it very clear that the mental health of our students matters and must be a district priority!!

Many of you reached out today requesting an update of what went down last night and what ACE’s phenomenal speakers had to say. Well, here ya go…

Board Meeting Update 

The CUSD administration presented  its proposals for the collective bargaining agreement with ACE Psychs/MHSPs to the school board. Many ACE psychologists and classroom teachers  took the opportunity to make public comments, particularly about the critical state of our students’ mental health. We believe that Clovis has the resources to invest and make our school district the gold standard in student mental health services.

WATCH: ABC 30 coverage of the board meeting here.

Check out the videos from ACE members:

Bernadette Rodarte, school psychologist

Jenny Chavera, classroom teacher

Trish Orr, school psychologist

Silvia Berst, classroom teacher

Judy Dumas, classroom teacher

Melissa Ferdinandsen, classroom teacher

Kristin Heimerdinger, classroom teacher

Cy Hiyane, school psychologist

Mental Health Support in CA  

Today California Governor Gavin Newsom was in Fresno to announce a landmark $4.7 BILLION investment in mental health for California’s youth ages 0-25. Learn more about this historic mental health overhaul HERE. We are thrilled about California’s commitment to mental health and look forward to the day Clovis Unified makes the same commitment in our students.

Upcoming Bargaining Dates:

• Monday, Aug 29th
• Wednesday, Aug 31st
• Thursday, Sep 1st

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions, ideas, or to share your support!

ACE Bargaining Team (Rachel, Amy, Jade, Ryan, Melissa, Bernadette, Cy, and Trish)

August 12th

Hello Everyone and TGIF-

First of all – we were all energized and touched by the very large turnout to our lunch meeting on Thursday. And, today, it was amazing seeing so many of you here (loved the green shirts!) as we started negotiations.

Serving on the bargaining team is an honor but it's also been hard. Knowing that we are all together as we bargain a contract that will ensure that our students get the mental health services they deserve is HUGE for us as a team!

We were disappointed that CUSD refused to agree to having some of us to observe the process and conversation. We will continue to discuss the importance of transparency as we bargain our first contract with CUSD administration.

NEGOTIATIONS TODAY

(here's the folder with all proposals and counter proposals)

• Article 2 “Negotiation Procedures”

• Continued discussion, progress being made
• We also proposed to allow our department members the ability to observe our negotiation procedures to promote transparency and inclusion as we had intended for this morning.

• Article 4, 5, and 6 “Workload and Case Management, Job Duties and Working Conditions and Hours of Employment”

• We proposed 3 articles last bargaining session in July, which included 9 pages of thoughtfully crafted language of what our job duties entail and how to balance the important work we put in each and every day for our students.
• District responded with a succinct 1 page condensed counter - which included a complete strikethrough of our article 5 and 6 proposals and summarized what we do into 14 bullet points, each no more than 1 sentence in length. It was the equivalent of working on a beautiful 30 page psychoeducational report and having someone throw it in the garbage bin. We responded with strong and emotional statements to the Admin of our concerns at not seeing any effort to collaborate on a structure for Psychologists and MHSPs that better supports our students.
• It is disappointing that the district has not prioritized developing a legitimate response to our proposals, but also showed a lack of awareness of the burden of our workload and how that impacts the support for Special Education and mental health.

• Article 7 “Assignment Changes”

• New article we proposed today.
• We presented the importance of having assignment vacancies posted so that existing employees can apply to them and having a systematic and objective process for assigning positions.  

• Article 8 - “Salary”

• Here’s what we discussed with the CUSD bargaining team
• District can afford to invest in us - check out video from ACE School Finance Research Committee.
• Here’s our proposed salary schedule. Those who joined our presentation yesterday may notice some changes to the numbers we showed. We took the feedback from those in the room and made some tweaks before presenting it to Admin. We know the district has the resources to invest in recruiting and retaining the very best for our schools and our students. Here’s the contract language we proposed, including our proposal that the salary increase be retroactive to the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year.

JOIN US ON THE PATH TO WIN A STRONG CONTRACT

1. Join the Psychologist Support Squad - contact Ludvik Papikian (cell is 559-259-6974 and email is ludvikpapi@gmail.com).
2. Attend the August 17th CUSD Board Meeting (we’re meeting at 6:15 pm so we can all sit together) and feel free to wear your ACE Swag or Green in support of Mental Health.
3. Talk to a classroom teacher at your site about our bargain and what ACE is doing to ensure our students get the best mental health supports! If they would like to learn more they can visit the ACE website.

NEXT BARGAINING DATES

1. August 29th
2. August 31st
3. September 1st

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or ideas.

ACE Bargaining Team (Rachel, Amy, Jade, Ryan, Melissa, Bernadette and Cy)

July 13, 2022

Hello everyone -

We hope that everyone is enjoying summer vacation! We wanted to update you about Monday’s bargaining session:

• Based on the survey data we all provided, we were able to draft a package of proposals for Workload and Case Management (Article 4), Job Duties and Working Conditions (Article 5), and Hours of Employment (Article 6) that we believe will create clear, efficient, and sustainable work for School Psychologists and MHSPs that will allow us to give our students the support they need to have the best chance of success and wellbeing.
• We were also able to make a counter proposal on Article 2, which addresses negotiation procedures, and received the District’s counter to Article 3, which addresses Association Rights. To reference the newly presented articles, and the ongoing bargaining counters from previous proposals, please visit the google folder which we continue to update throughout this process by clicking here.
• While we were pleased with our ability to continue these conversations today, especially following the presentation we reviewed with the District on June 28 regarding the survey data over the past 3 years that has led to our proposals on Articles 4-6, we were disappointed that the district’s bargaining administrators who work with the Special Education department (Theresa and Robyn) were not present when we shared our proposal on job duties and working conditions as well as hours of employment. As a result, we expect that this may delay our progress in finding an agreement on these articles.
• Our next bargaining session is scheduled for August 12th. We have encouraged the district’s bargaining team to meet over the next month to process the content in Articles 4-6 so when we return in August we have counter proposals ready to review.
• We are also scheduled to meet and bargain on Aug 29th, Aug 31st and Sept 1st.
• The next part of the contract we are hoping to bargain for is salary - now that we have more information from the market study as well as the state budget that was recently released and the district-provided information previously requested regarding the impact of the state’s budget on their budget, we are at a good place to begin discussing compensation.
• The information provided leads us to conclude there is likely an additional $10-12 million ongoing dollars available on top of the already significant increases they knew about in May. Thus, while we know that the proposals in our contract will require an investment from the district, we are happy to see that there are likely resources available to address the content of our proposals.
• As always, please reach out to any of the psych/MHSP bargaining team if you have any questions, input, or feedback.
• Lastly, enjoy the remaining weeks of summer!

Sincerely,

The ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Team

(Rachel Allen, Jade Edwards, Ryan Elison, Cy Hiyane, Trish Orr, Bernadette Rodarte, and Melissa Saunders)

June 29, 2022

Dear School Psychologists and MHSPs,

 
Click to see a video update from the ACE Bargaining Team and read more details below

• Yesterday we had our meeting with the CUSD bargaining team. We are happy to report that we reached a tentative agreement on Article 1 - Agreement and Recognition. We reviewed our proposal for Negotiation Procedures (Article 2) and Association Rights (Article 3) that we emailed CUSD on June 22 after they canceled our bargaining date. The district countered on Article 2 but they were not prepared to discuss Article 3. You can read Article 2, CUSD’s counter proposal, and Article 3 here.
• The CUSD bargaining team reported that they will be sunshining articles at the next board meeting (July 13), with public comment at the following board meeting (August 17).
• We spent a large part of the day engaged in an in-depth conversation about workload and job duties. We were able to review our survey data about what’s important and necessary for us to do our jobs effectively. CUSD and ACE both want Clovis to be the gold standard for student mental and social-emotional health as much as we are for sports and academics. That requires on-going investment in our department in a way that leverages our resources through efficient and sustainable systems.
• We presented to the CUSD bargaining team this slide deck that shows how important a consistent  and sustainable workload; clear job duties; resources and support; and flexibility and autonomy in our roles are to us providing top-tier support for our students. When it comes to possible solutions and options, we want to ask for input again, so please complete this one question survey (please complete by this Friday, July 1st so we can use your input in crafting our contract language).
• Good news regarding resources and the state budget!! LCFF – COLA 6.56% + 6.28% add-on  = 13% compounded increase to the base grant and $2,813 (adjusted for inflation annually) add-on for all TK students. This is significantly more than even the last good news we heard in May regarding the budget.
• CUSD finally shared the long-awaited Market Study! You can read the results of the Market Study here. It’s pretty confusing, so we’re going to take some time reviewing it.
• Next steps

• 
  Complete our one question survey about workload and job duties by July 1st
• Next bargaining date is July 11th and we intend to propose language regarding workload, job duties, and work year and work day. Stay tuned and follow us on social media!

Xoxo,

ACE Bargaining Team

Subject: ACE June Bargaining Team Update

Dear School Psychologists and MHSPs,

• We hope you are all enjoying your well deserved summer vacation and finding time to engage in activities that bring you joy {like not writing reports!}. We had high hopes of sharing an update of our bargaining meeting with the district that was scheduled for today; however, the district canceled our meeting yesterday afternoon. Your ACE Bargaining Team decided not to waste time and used the day to work on articles regarding caseloads, working conditions, job descriptions and duties, assignment changes, and our work day/work year. These articles represent a continuation of the work we’ve been doing since the last day of school as we have met regularly over break to keep the ball rolling. We also offered the district bargaining team 9 additional dates between now and September 1st that we are hoping their team will be available to continue negotiations. At this time, our next scheduled bargaining date is Tuesday, June 28th, with additional dates scheduled for July 11th and August 12th.
• In order to prioritize our proposal and help draft language on caseload and workload, we’re developing a one question survey for everyone to complete – be looking out for it next week with our negotiation update!
• Even though the district canceled today’s bargaining meeting, we sent them proposals for two articles (negotiation procedures and association rights) so they can come to our June 28th meeting with their counter-proposal in the hopes of increasing efficiency in negotiations. In our ongoing effort to be transparent, the proposals are included in this google folder so everyone can review/provide input. The folder will continue to be updated throughout this process so you can see where we stand every step of the way. Please note: These are proposals and have not been agreed upon by the district. If you have questions about any of the articles, please reach out to your bargaining team so we can provide clarification since we are learning a new language as we develop a strong contract.
• We also informed CUSD that ACE has requested the results of the salary market study multiple times since March and they have consistently refused to comply citing a variety of reasons. This information (regarding tax dollars and public education) should not be held in secret and we see no reason why it can’t be shared (even if it is still in draft format). The information was used as a basis for recommending the 7% raise for other employee groups and therefore the ACE bargaining team should also be entitled to review it. Under EERA, ACE is entitled to any information that is relevant and necessary to discharging its duty to bargain on behalf of its bargaining unit members. An employer’s failure to respond to an information request constitutes a violation of its duty to bargain in good faith. We gave the district a deadline of Monday, June 27th to provide the requested information.

Your ACE bargaining team has been working diligently throughout these negotiations to advocate for the resources needed to succeed in providing our students and colleagues the support they need. We feel good about the progress we have made as a bargaining team and are looking forward to sharing outcomes of the negotiations as they are available. We love CUSD and want to make our district the gold standard for social emotional health for our students. Thank you for your support - your texts, emails, and selfies throughout this process (and especially on bargaining days) are invaluable. This is your team, and we’re in this together!

4/6/2022

Subject: ACE Bargaining Team Update

Dear Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs,

• In preparation for our first bargaining session with CUSD administration on April 29th:

• We've been hard at work on our draft proposal for our first contract. We’re looking at other contracts from around the state and in the local area (along with our bargaining platform and input from all of you). We will continue to send you regular updates including after every bargaining session;
• We are going to request at least two more bargaining dates with CUSD for this school year;
• We’re sending out some information about how everyone can support our bargaining via district mail.  Be sure to keep an eye out for you special delivery at your Wednesday site;
• In the meantime – if you have other issues or concerns please use this form so we can keep track of them and follow up with you.

• Spring Budget update and Salary Market Study – Many of us have been in meetings with admin in the past week or so and we have been hearing lots of questions about the CUSD presentation. We’re doing research into CUSD’s information but in the meantime here’s some initial responses that we thought might be helpful:

•  ACE won’t get in the way of any raise proposed by CUSD. We’re doing our homework to make sure we are all fully informed and the information is transparent and straightforward
• We’re all happy to see that the district has agreed that the historic surplus budget and excess reserves should be used to support current priorities!

We’re excited and honored to be serving on the ACE bargaining team. We are committed to listening to all ACE bargaining unit members (all CUSD Psychologists and MHSPs) about what our students and colleagues need and deserve. Again, please feel free to reach out to any of us individually or use the form and one of us will follow up with you. Have a wonderful and well deserved Spring Break!

Sincerely,

Ryan on behalf of ACE Bargaining Team (Rachel Allen, Jade Edwards, Cy Hiyane, Amy Kilburn, Trish Orr, Bernadette Rodarte and Melissa Saunders)

3/7/2022

Dear Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs,

Kudos to all of our colleagues who took part in our recent ACE survey!

Your feedback about our ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Platform provides essential direction to our bargaining team and will be helpful as we complete our final preparations for union contract negotiations.  Also, your nominations for the remaining seats on our ACE bargaining team help us make sure respected colleagues take on this important responsibility.  

Survey Results

You have spoken! The following areas were rated as highest priority in each of our bargaining platform areas:

• Protect What We Love        Part time opportunities                                                                                           Autonomy and flexibility in role & work day

• Competitive Salaries and Benefits              Competitive base salary

• Supportive Working Conditions        Clear job description & consistent standard of practices/expectations   
                                          Allotment of funds for Psychs/MHSPs

• Transparent Decision Making & Culture               Inclusion of Psych/MHSP voice in decision making

As a result, we will make sure to prioritize those areas when it comes to negotiations. The results also included some considerations of items not included in the current draft of the bargaining platform. These new ideas will be considered as we move forward in the bargaining process, which will continue to include your feedback for review and refinement to ensure negotiations appropriately represent our department. You can view a list of those additional points of consideration here.

Our ACE Bargaining Team Nominations!

We want to congratulate our newest bargaining team members! Ryan Elison and Bernadette Rodarte have accepted their nominations to be part of our ACE Bargaining team.  They join Christina Perez Luna, Cy Hiyane, Jade Edwards, Melissa Saunders, Rachel Allen and Trish Orr.  

All of our bargaining team members were nominated by our colleagues and accepted their nominations.  Since the number of nominees who accepted the responsibility matched the number of ACE Bargaining team positions, we will not have to hold an election.  

REC teacher Amy Kilburn will also join our bargaining team to offer support and keep us connected with the rest of ACE.  We are thankful for her hard work and assistance as we take these important next steps.  

What Comes Next?

In the weeks to come our bargaining team will meet to finalize a request for information about district and program finances and expenditures.  Now that we are a union, all the books are open.  Additionally we will be putting together our initial bargaining proposals and scheduling our first bargaining dates with the CUSD administration.  

We look forward to keeping you all up to date every step of the way.  Remember, both our union and our contract negotiations work best when all our colleagues are involved in the process.  As a result, there will be many more opportunities for all of you to provide additional input and support during the months ahead.  

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Your ACE Bargaining Team,

Bernadette Rodarte

Christina Luna

Cy Hiyane

Jade Edwards

Melissa Saunders

Rachel Allen

Ryan Elison

Trish Orr

2/10/2022

Dear Psychologist and MHSP Colleagues,

Following last week’s exciting vote count, we are thrilled to complete our final preparations to begin our union contract negotiations with CUSD administration.

Over the Fall Semester we already:

• Completed a comprehensive ACE Psychologist/MHSP bargaining survey
• Reviewed the results of the survey during input meetings
• Established our ACE Clovis Psychologist/MHSP Bargaining Team as eight of our colleagues who were nominated for our ACE Bargaining Team accepted their nominations
• Created a ACE Psychologist/MHSP Bargaining Platform from our survey results

Before we begin union contract negotiations, we have a few additional steps to take together to make sure we are as prepared as possible to win a strong union contract that addresses the needs of our colleagues and our students.   Our aim is to begin negotiations in March.  To do that, you all have an important role to play.  Specifically, we are inviting you to provide your input in the following three ways:

1. Review our ACE Bargaining Platform and help us prioritize and also let us know if there is anything missing.
2. We have two open spots on our ACE Psych/MHSP bargaining team because two of our members who accepted their nomination in the Fall had to step back and wanted new voices to be a part of our team.  If more than two of our colleagues accept their nomination for these two spots, we will have an election to determine who fills those important roles.

You can review our ACE Bargaining Platform and nominate colleagues by filling out this short survey.  Please take five minutes to do so today.  Deadline is 5pm on February 17th.

3. Watch this new 3 minute ACE video that provides a deep dive into CUSD financial data and explains an important part of the context for our upcoming union contract negotiations.  

Please let us know if you have any questions about our platform, the bargaining team nomination process, or the CUSD finances explained in the linked video.  We look forward to working closely with all of you and value your input-- whether you voted for ACE or not.  We are in this together.

Sincerely,

ACE Psychologist/MHSP Organizing and Bargaining Teams

PS- check out the Fresno Bee story about our big victory!

2/4/2022

Dear Psychologist and MHSP Colleagues,

The votes have been counted and we are excited to announce Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs voted overwhelmingly for ACE/CTA/NEA!  

By the Numbers:

• 81 eligible voters
• 71 voted
• 49 voted for ACE/CTA/NEA
• 16 voted for CTC
• 6 voted for no union

This means 69% of ballots cast were for our new union, ACE/CTA/NEA!  Only 7% of our colleagues voted for no representation.

We appreciate all the time and energy so many of you have committed to this historic process. We look forward to working closely with all Clovis psychologists and MHSPs in the months to come to negotiate our first union contract.  We want to extend a special invitation to those who voted for CPC or no union.  Your voice matters and we want your input into our contract negotiations.  

We also want to acknowledge all of the support from other Clovis educators.  We are in this together and look forward to supporting your efforts to join ACE as well.

Next Steps

Now that we voted ACE/CTA/NEA, we have so much to do to get ready for contract negotiations.  Next steps include:

• All Psychologists/MHSPs review and update our ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Platform (PDF).
• ACE Psych/MHSPs Bargaining Team will develop our Contract Bargaining Proposals based on survey data, ACE Bargaining Platform, and ongoing input from colleagues.
• We negotiate our first union contract with the CUSD administration--who is legally obligated to negotiate in good faith.
• Once we reach a tentative agreement with the CUSD administration on our union contract, ACE Psychologists and MHSPs will have an opportunity to vote whether to ratify our union contract.  If ratified it will take effect.  If voted down, our ACE bargaining team will resume negotiations.

More to come about next steps in the days to come!  Congratulations and have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

On behalf of our ACE Psychologists/MHSP Organizing Committee and Bargaining Committee

1/25/2022

Subject: Almost there

Dear Colleagues,

Check out these great support letters for Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs from Kaiser mental health professionals and Fresno City Firefighters!  It means so much that other union professionals who are committed to serving the public, support our decision to unionize with ACE/CTA/NEA and are eager to stand with us as we negotiate our first union contract.

Vote Count February 4th

The end of our union election is in sight.   We appreciate all of the great conversations and participation from Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs over the past few weeks and look forward to focusing on contract negotiations soon.  Votes will be counted on Friday, February 4th at the PERB offices in Sacramento.  

COVID Staffing in CUSD

The past month has been difficult with staffing challenges resulting from Omicron.  ACE launched a brief poll to better understand if there are any urgent issues that should be addressed to better support students and educators.  Please take two minutes to fill this out before Friday.  Your voice counts! ACE Covid Safety and Staffing Poll.

If you have any questions about the election, the process or our next steps, reach out to one of your ACE Psych/MHSP bargaining team or organizing committee members.  We hope you are staying healthy and look forward to working closely with you to support our students.

Sincerely,

ACE Psychologist and MHSP Organizing and Bargaining Teams,

Rachel Allen

1/14/22

Subject: Extravaganza Week Wrap-Up!

Hello fellow psychs and MHSPs,

What an exciting week it has been! On behalf of your ACE Bargaining Committee and Organizing Committee, we want to say thank you to every one of you for the thought and conviction you have used to navigate this process. We know it has been a long journey but we are almost at the finish line and cannot wait to move into the next phase of advocating for the causes that matter most to our collective group.

We were absolutely thrilled with the wonderful turnout to our extravaganza events this week! For those of you whose schedules prohibited your ability to attend, we wanted to make sure you had access to the information that was shared, and invite you to reach out with any questions you may have. We want you to vote with confidence! As such, here are some resources that may interest you:

• Extravaganza Slide Deck - feel free to peruse the information shared via our informational presentation.
• Panel Discussion Highlights - our panel included three psychologists in California who appreciate their union representation along with legal representation from CTA! We asked them several questions and wanted to highlight some of their responses because their insight and experience is incredibly valuable.
• Bargaining Platform - this document is the foundation of everything we stand for and want to get to work negotiating for. Please consider adding your name to the list of colleagues who are publicly endorsing their advocacy for these important causes that were the outcome of the survey completed by psychs and MHSPs last year.
• Get Familiar with the New Items on the Cognitive Test Administration (CTA) - this tutorial video will go over some new items added to the Vocabulary and Similarities subtests.
• Assets vs Deficits - this chart reviews the outcomes of the pattern of strengths and weaknesses assessment to help you determine the eligibility of ACE as our choice for union representation.

In addition, we are very excited to announce our ACE Psych/MHSP Website which is chock full of goodness such as our bargaining platform, newsletters, important dates, who we are, FAQs, and so on! One of our personal favorite parts of the website is the “Community Support” section, which includes several open letters and public comments from organizations and individuals in the community that are rooting for all ACE supporters (teachers and psychs/MHSPs) in the process to unionize! Check it out!

Finally, because we know this has been a stressful process for many, we wanted to provide a safe and fun space for everyone in our department to unwind. Your ACE Bargaining and Organizing Committee are hosting a happy hour with complimentary appetizers on Wednesday, January 19th at 4:30 at The Point (Willow/Nees). Vote, send in that ballot, and then join in a communal celebration focusing on the things that unite us - our love for our students, our desire to do our absolute best, and our commitment to making CUSD an amazing place to work! We look forward to seeing you there!

(insert invite here)

Sincerely,

ACE Psychologist and MHSP Bargaining and Organizing Committee

12/30/2021

Subject: Let’s finish what we started

Dear Colleagues,

We hope you are having a joyful time with friends and family, and that your holiday break is bringing well-deserved rest and relaxation.  After a difficult semester we are so thankful for the holidays!

We are excited about our upcoming election for Clovis Psychologists and Mental Health Support Providers and look forward to finally having a chance to vote for ACE/CTA in January.  We can’t wait to start negotiating a strong union contract soon after the ballots are counted on February 3rd by the Public Employment Relations Board.  This election and our opportunity to build a strong and effective union with ACE makes us very optimistic about 2022.

We wanted to make sure you take some time to review our ACE Bargaining Platform (linked here).  This platform was put together by your ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining committee (that you nominated in the Fall) and is based on priorities determined by surveys you completed in August of this year.  If you have any questions about our platform or the bargaining process, be sure to let one of us know.  Also, if you believe there is anything missing here that we should work to achieve, reach out.  We won’t be putting together proposals until after our election.

We also want to share our deep concerns about the behavior of CPC in recent months.  Throughout this process we’ve been consistent, honest, and transparent in all our conversations with our colleagues about our unionization plans.  That is important when building a strong and successful organization of educators.  Sadly, CPC has not done the same.  Instead, they’ve changed their position about unionization, been dishonest about ACE, and unfortunately, failed to do even basic research before partnering with the Goyette Ruano and Thompson law firm (GRT).

CPC Says What They Think We Want to Hear: When CPC initially intervened to delay our unionization process with ACE, their stated goal was to maintain the status quo and their position was that we didn't need representation.  Email after email from CPC made that clear.  Then, when they realized that wasn’t working, they flip flopped.  Now they are saying unionization is valuable—we just need a different organization that is cheaper, deferential to administrative decisions, and disconnected from other union psychologists and MHSPs throughout the state.  Based on their behavior,  we are concerned their goal has remained the same even though their rhetoric has changed.

CPC has not been Honest: When building a union of educators, it is very important to trust that your organization is going to act with integrity.  Unfortunately, CPC has repeatedly been dishonest—not just about their goals but also about their characterizations of ACE.   Just last week Karin emailed all of us a graphic that states ACE will be “run by a bargaining committee that is controlled by CTA.”  This is similar to other misleading characterizations about ACE and the California Teachers Association. Let’s be clear.  We are proud to be affiliated with an organization of over 300,000 professional educators from across California.  We look forward to benefiting from the support of other unionized educational professionals, including thousands of psychologists who are members of CTA.  But decisions about ACE will be made here in Clovis by educators who are elected by our colleagues.  As members of the bargaining team that were nominated by our colleagues here in Clovis, we resent this type of dishonesty and believe it has no place in our union.

CPC Has not Done Their Research into GRT: The latest announcement by CPC includes their decision to “partner” with GRT, a law firm with a spotty past and minimal experience supporting educators.  If CPC was even minimally interested in establishing a strong union, they would not have established a relationship with GRT.  Some of our concerns with GRT include:

• GRT has Very Little Experience Supporting Educators: In fact, they only “partner” with 6 small school districts or charter schools in the state, have very little experience representing psychologists, and educators who “partnered” with GRT have often settled for bad union contracts with inadequate wages, prep time, and poor benefits.  This contract from West Park Elementary is one such example.
• GRT has a History of legal action against people they work with: A Union of medics hired Goyette during a dispute and when the union was dissatisfied with their representation and tried to end the contract, Goyette sued them.
• GRT Attorneys have Connections to Individuals Not in line with Our Values: Rafael Ruano is the attorney at the Goyette law firm communicating with Clovis educators and is connected with Larry Sand (here), notorious critic of public education, proponent of increased class sizes, and outspoken in opposition to lgbtq+ issues.

You know us.  Many of us have worked side by side for years.  We love Clovis and also know things can be better.  To protect what we love and make the changes we need, we must have a strong, competent and independent union.  For Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs to achieve that, it is important we work closely with the same educators we collaborate with everyday.  We can do that in ACE/CTA.  It is also important we are connected with the thousands of other union psychologists and hundreds of thousands of other union educators across the state.  There is a reason why educators choose to be affiliated with CTA every year-- it is because educators who are part of CTA are provided with resources and support that helps them succeed.

We look forward to working with you to build a strong organization of Psychologists and MHSPs here in Clovis.  Our next important step includes standing up for our students and profession by voting ACE/CTA in January!

Sincerely,

ACE Psychologist and MHSP Bargaining and Organizing Committee

Jade Edwards

Tamara Soemali

Rachel Allen

Janet Ryska

Cy Hiyane

Melissa Saunders

Trish Orr

Suja George

Christina Luna

December 15, 2021

Subject: A better 2022…

Dear Clovis Psychologist and MHSP Colleagues,

As we head into the new year, we are very optimistic about our plan to protect what we love about Clovis and find strategic solutions to what needs to be changed.  Over the past eight months we’ve done so much to build a strong and independent union. This includes:

• Over 70% of Clovis Psychologists & MHSPs signed our ACE union support petition.
• High participation in our ACE union bargaining prep survey to identify priorities for our union contract.
• Nominated and established an ACE Psych + MHSP union bargaining team comprised of eight psychologist colleagues from our schools selected by our co-workers.
• Collaborated with educators from across the district to win improvements around IA staffing, substitute coverage, Covid sick leave and more.

Now with our upcoming election right around the corner (ballots will be mailed by PERB on January 7th), we have three important next steps:

1. Vote for the Association of Clovis Educators/CTA/NEA
2. Support our ACE Bargaining Team as we start contract negotiations
3. Ratify our union contract with a vote by Clovis psychologists/MHSPs once our ACE bargaining team reaches a tentative agreement with CUSD

We are proud of our hard work so far and excited about the chance to show real unity in our January election.  We believe that unity will put us in a good position to negotiate a strong union contract.  An important factor we will take into account in negotiations is the very large reserves CUSD has maintained for years--much more than other similar districts.  We look forward to ensuring these resources are used to support our colleagues and our students.

To find out more about CUSD reserves and how they relate to our negotiations, check out this video.

We are also proud that ACE is part of a larger movement that supports and empowers educators.  In fact, over 90% of educators in CA are members of the California Teachers Association.  We look forward to sharing our expertise more widely with CA educators while, in turn, benefiting from the support and experience of other professionals from across the state.

Please join us for our upcoming ACE School Psych and MHSP Extravaganzas!  We are providing two opportunities to gain insight and ask questions from a panel of CA school psychologists who are represented by CTA, including our former colleague Diana Thomas. You will also learn about our bargaining platform, have the opportunity to view psych specific contract language, learn about the perks of CTA, and meet your ACE Organizing Committee and Bargaining Committee.

• To RSVP for our January 12 @ 530pm virtual meeting, go here.
• To RSVP for our January 13 @ 730p virtual meeting, go here.

If you have any questions, or want to know how you can best help, please reach out to one of your ACE Psychologist & MHSP Bargaining Team or Organizing Committee Members.  Enjoy your holidays!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Psychologist Organizing and Bargaining Teams,

Christina Luna

Cy Hiyane

Jade Edwards

Melissa Saunders

Rachel Allen

Tamara Soemali

Janet Ryska

Suja George

Keri Machado

Trish Orr

PS-- It seems there have been some unfortunate rumors spread aimed at making our part time colleagues feel like their jobs might be precarious if we unionize.  We want to address that clearly and definitively.  Nothing about joining the union or bargaining a contract will cause employees to lose their part-time status, unless we agree to it in the bargaining process.  No members of the ACE bargaining committee would support such a proposition. 

Our part time colleagues play an important role in our district.  Having the option of part time work helps with recruitment and retention of skilled psychologists.  Denying such opportunities would harm working parents and would be detrimental to our schools.  The truth is, union contracts often create more protection and fairness around supporting part-time educators.  We look forward to working with you to achieve protections for part time psychologists in our ACE union contract in Clovis.  

Subject: Election Scheduled!

December 7, 2021

Dear Psychologist and MHSP Colleagues,

We are excited to announce an election has finally been scheduled for Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs to vote for union recognition (details below)!  

As you know, our psychologist and MHSP colleagues filed for union recognition with over 70% support for unionizing with the Association of Clovis Educators/CTA/NEA back in June.  Unfortunately, CPC filed an intervention with PERB, requiring a three-way vote.  This delayed our ability to start union negotiations earlier this Fall.  However, we made the best use of the intervening time by conducting a survey to identify our bargaining priorities, held input meetings so our colleagues could review the survey results and brainstorm solutions, and established our ACE Psychologist and MHSP union bargaining team.  Additionally, we worked closely with our other educator colleagues to make improvements here in CUSD through our Fall Forward campaign.  

We are pleased that our election is coming up and hope to begin union negotiations shortly thereafter.

Preliminary Info About Our Union Election:

Our election will be conducted by a mail-in ballot.  The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) will send ballots to our homes/PO Boxes.  There will be three choices on the ballots.  These include:

• Association of Clovis Educators/CTA/NEA
• Clovis Psychologists for Clovis
• No Representation

Eligible employees will include Psychologists, Mental Health Support Providers, paid Psychologist Interns, and paid Retirees working in one of these classifications.  Not eligible will be Lead Psychologists, management, supervisory, and confidential employees.

Election Timeline (important dates):

• December 17th, 2021: CUSD will post an official elections notice at our school sites/offices.
• January 7th, 2022: The Public Employment Relations Board (which oversees our union election) will send ballots to all eligible employees.  
• February 3, 2022: All completed ballots must be received by PERB.  That means it will be important to return your ballot by mail well before this deadline.

We want to encourage everyone to vote.  You can check out the official election agreement here.  We will share more important information related to this important election over the next few weeks.  

We look forward to working closely with all of you on our next important steps.  Please let us know if you have any questions or want more information about our union.  We will also share information about our upcoming ACE Psychologist and MHSP Election Extravaganzas!  We are celebrating the opportunity to vote and move forward!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Psychologist and MHSP Organizing and Bargaining Teams

Tamara Soemali

Janet Ryska

Jade Edwards

Rachel Allen

Suja George

Cy Hiyane

Melissa Saunders

Kerri Machado

Subject: ACE Updates!

November 10, 2021

Dear Psychologist and MHSP Colleagues,

There have been many developments this past week that we wanted to share with you as we continue to build a strong union for psychologists and MHSPs across Clovis Unified.

First, our ACE Psych/MHSP bargaining committee met for the first time last Monday and is developing an ACE Bargaining platform based on the input you provided in our recent bargaining survey.  We will share that platform soon.  We will also begin the process of developing proposals for our union contract and look forward to getting final feedback from you before we start negotiations.

Second, we have a meeting with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) this Wednesday where we anticipate discussing timing for our union election.  As expected, CUSD administration denied recognition of ACE as our union due to the intervention by Clovis Psychologists for Clovis.   Additionally, CUSD administration has said they do not think that Lead Psychologists, interns, or retirees should be eligible for our union.  We will be reviewing their rationale in the days to come and would welcome any input or thoughts from you about this issue.  We believe we will be able to schedule our election very soon where psychologists and MHSPs will be able to finally reaffirm our decision to unionize with ACE.  We will share updates as soon as they occur.

Finally, we are excited to report some big victories in our ACE Fall Forward campaign.  As you know, educators across the district--including psychologists-- have been working together to win:

• Extended Covid Sick Leave for our colleagues who have to quarantine or miss work due to the pandemic
• Increased number of IAs and academic support staff
• Expanded planning and collaboration time
• Improved substitute coverage
• Enhanced stipends and making them both competitive and transparent
• A plan to establish reasonable class size caps so we can provide the support our students deserve

As a result of our efforts, over the last few weeks CUSD has announced improvements in pay for substitutes, improved sub coverage, the hiring of additional IAs for SDC programs, and an extension of Covid Sick Leave.  This progress is great news and will help our students.  However,  there remain concerns about implementation and more must be done in the short term to support planning time, class size reductions, and fair stipends for our colleagues.  

It is really important to sign on to our ACE Fall Forward campaign if you haven’t already, whether you are a supporter of the union or not, since this is a separate endeavor that all educators can advocate for.  Educators standing up together to address these important issues sends a loud message to our community that we are serious about making progress.  That’s key to addressing our Fall Forward issues and will also help in future negotiations for CUSD school psychologists in the coming days.

If you haven’t indicated your support for the Fall Forward campaign yet, please do so here: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/fall-forward-with-ace. Our students and fellow educators will benefit from your camaraderie.

Let us know if you have any questions, or what to help with concerning next steps!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Organizing and Bargaining Team

Christina Luna

Cy Hiyane

Jade Edwards

Janet Ryska

Keri Machado

Melissa Saunders

Rachel Allen

Suja George

Tamara Soemali

Trish Orr

October 26,2021

Subject: ACE Bargaining Team Next Steps

Dear Colleagues,

Just a few important updates this week.

First, we want to congratulate the following psychologists and MHSPs for accepting their nominations as members of the first ever ACE Union bargaining team!

• Cy Hiyane
• Jade Edwards
• Melissa Saunders
• Trish Orr
• Christina Luna
• Keri Machado
• Rachel Allen
• Suja George

Our first meeting will take place Monday, November 1 to develop a bargaining platform that reflects the priorities that were surfaced in our bargaining surveys and also discuss a union negotiations timeline.  We will be sure to report out on any important issues that arise.

Second, as we reported last week we will likely have an election soon where all psychologists will once again have the ability to affirm their support for unionization.  We anticipate there will be three choices on the ballot, 1) ACE, 2) CPC and 3) No union.  The latest we heard from the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) suggests CUSD has until November 4th to respond to PERB’s latest motion, and after that the PERB will reach out to us and CPC, hopefully to schedule an election soon.  Despite the delays preventing us from going straight to negotiations, we want to use this time wisely to be prepared for future bargaining meetings.  We think it is important to make the best use of this time to make sure we are ready for contract negotiations once the election is finally over.

Third, we would like to encourage you to sign on to the ACE Fall Forward Campaign.  Educators from across the district are registering their support for fixing these important issues.  Please check it out and show your support!  You can find information about the Fall Forward Campaign here (https://actionnetwork.org/forms/fall-forward-with-ace) which includes information about the main aims: Increasing the number of IAs and academic support staff, increasing teacher planning/collaboration time, improving substitute coverage, extending COVID sick leave (won), establishing competitive and transparent stipends, and capping class sizes. The link includes an opportunity to add your signature to the many educators that are working hard to advocate for these essential improvements as we stand united to do what is best for kids.

Let us know if you have any questions or want to help!

Sincerely,

Melissa Saunders

Cy Hiyane

Jade Edwards

Janet Ryska

Suja George

Tamara Soemali

October 15, 2021

Subject: Important ACE Psych and MHSP Updates

Dear Colleagues,

Hope this email finds you well.  We wanted to share a few important updates about our ACE unionization and contract negotiation process as there will be some important opportunities for you to be involved in the coming weeks.

ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Team Nominations 

Over twenty of our colleagues were nominated for our ACE union bargaining team.  We’ve followed up with all of our nominated co-workers and shared with them the important responsibilities of the position (you can find those here).  We are still waiting on the responses from a few individuals.  If more nominees accept their nomination than we have positions (six full bargaining team members + two alternates), we will have an election to choose our representatives.  That election will take place in late October or early November.  Appreciation to all of those psychologists and MHSPs who are considering taking on this responsibility!  It is so important we get to choose our representatives.

ACE Fall Forward Campaign

As you’ve heard already, educators across the district are working hard to fix issues that will support our students and colleagues.  In fact, educators at the Clovis Adult Program recently won a big victory by organizing to ensure they received an important stipend for missed preps.  You can read about that victory here.  

Additionally, after strong advocacy, it was just announced that CUSD has agreed to extend our COVID sick leave.  This is another big win for our educators, students and the Clovis community.  Much appreciation to Tamara for joining the team of ACE leaders from across the district who successfully advocated for this change with the CUSD Executive Cabinet.  Coordination across professions is important and this win shows what can be accomplished when we unite our voices.

Despite these wins, more is needed.  Our ACE Fall Forward campaign is calling on CUSD to fix a number of critical issues that will help our colleagues succeed.  ACE leaders have crunched the numbers.  CUSD can afford these improvements and more.  Our district’s reserve has grown to an incredible $140 million, which is 10 times the reserve legally required by California and twice that which is required by our CUSD Board policy.  We believe administration can better invest in staff and students.  Check out this video on our finances here.

CPC/ACE...What’s Next?

We recently received a Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) decision that did not throw out CPC’s effort to delay our negotiations process.  You may recall Clovis Psychologists/MHSPs filed for union recognition as ACE with 75% support.  A few anti-union co-workers then “intervened” as CPC to slow down the process and try to trigger an election.  ACE Psychologist/MHSP committee members believed that the effort from CPC to intervene was inappropriate since they have stated they don’t intend to function as a union. The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) concluded that there is no rule that says an employee organization has to plan on being an effective representative in order to intervene.  

We are meeting as a group on Monday, October 18th to discuss next steps and will report out afterwards.  Our guess is there will be an election scheduled soon.  We are eager to move forward so our colleagues can begin the process of negotiating our union contract.

Faculty Senate/CTO

Finally, in case you haven’t heard, the Faculty Senate has announced their intention to change their name to the Clovis Teachers Organization and try to become an exclusive representative for classroom teachers.   This rebranding raises a lot of serious legal and ethical questions that are separate from those raised by the CPC situation. For more analysis on this late breaking news, check out this recent ACE newsletter.

So much going on!  If you have any questions about any of this, please reach out to us.  We look forward to updating everyone about our bargaining team elections, next steps with CPC, and any new surprising developments on our path to a strong union contract, as they arise.

Take care,

Your ACE Psychologist and MHSP Organizing Committee

Melissa Saunders

Cy Hiyane

Jade Edwards

Janet Ryska

Suja George

Tamara Soemali

______________________

Hey all, our newsletter was missing an important link to a video update about PERB’s investigation of CUSD.  For those looking for it, the link to the video is here.

Subject: Our Survey Results and Next Steps

September 3, 2021

Dear Colleagues,

We appreciate all of those who made time to attend our first ACE Psychologist Contract Input Sessions.  We realize time is precious—especially during the first month of the school year!  The discussions were stimulating and will help us build on the amazing response to our ACE bargaining survey.

For those who were not able to make the meetings, we’ve compiled survey responses (disconnected from individual names) here.  You will notice we have included both quantitative and qualitative input.  We look forward to using the survey responses, input meeting discussion notes, as well as future discussions to help us prioritize our contract negotiations.  Also, email us with feedback!

Clovis Psychologist for Clovis (CPC) Intervention Status

As discussed previously, we filed for union recognition with 75% support among psychologists in June.  Usually, our union would already be recognized, and we would have started negotiations.  Unfortunately, due to the intervention by CPC, the process has been delayed.  As mentioned, we believe the intervention should be dismissed.  The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) is still considering next steps.  We anticipate hearing whether our union is recognized or we have to have an election even though the super majority of us already weighed in, in the weeks to come.

ACE Next Steps

Over the next two weeks we will follow up with the 19 Clovis psychologists who have been nominated to be on our ACE bargaining team, to see if they accept the nomination.  If more people accept than we have bargaining team positions (6 full time plus two alternates), we will hold an election.

Also, as many of you have heard, PERB is investigating CUSD about illegal support for cthe Faculty Senate.  This issue will be addressed in the weeks to come by both PERB and the Courts.  For a quick recap of the issues, check out this video.

A Few Clarifications

A few questions came up in our Bargaining Input Meetings we wanted to address with everyone.  

Can QIT continue when we have a union contract? Yes.  Many union contracts have explicit provisions for establishing labor/management committees that are charged with addressing a wide range of issues.  If maintaining QIT is important to us—which it seems like it is to many—we can absolutely include it in our union contract.  Moreover, we can work to establish a process for selecting committee members and safeguarding follow through on decisions that helps make sure QIT continues to be as productive as it has been these last few months.

How will we make sure our contract goals are in line with CUSD finances? Once we start negotiations, CUSD will provide our team with all financial documents.  We will be able to review how money is currently spent and have a say in future decisions about allocation of resources.  Our preliminary analysis suggests CUSD has significant resources that can be better allocated to support staff retention and student success.  That is especially the case this year given the large amount of Federal Stimulus Funds and additional State Education Funding CUSD has received.  Rest assured, none of us will carelessly demand improvements our district cannot afford.

Finally

We look forward to working with you all in the weeks to come and will keep you posted about new developments.  Please let us know if you want to help or if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Cy Hiyane

Jade Edwards

Janet Ryska

Melissa Saunders

Suja George

Tamara Soemali

August 3, 2021,

Dear Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs,

We are excited about the great response to the first day of our ACE bargaining survey.  We already received many thoughtful and nuanced submissions that will prove very useful as we prepare to negotiate our first contract.  We also received many nominations of great people for our ACE bargaining team.  Those nominated will have a chance to accept their nomination.  If there are more nominees than positions, we will hold an election to decide on our team.

If you have not had a chance to complete our survey yet, please take some time to do so soon.  You can find the survey here: https://forms.gle/SAqThrp1K6zK9vPX6

Also, no news yet on whether Clovis Psychologists for Clovis (CPC) effort to intervene and delay our unionization process will be dismissed by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).  As we mentioned in our newsletter on Monday, we filed this motion because we believe CPC is inappropriately attempting to undermine our colleagues’ democratic decision to unionize.  It is important to note, our decision to file this motion was made by our entire ACE Psychologist and MHSP organizing committee—not just one person.  We are committed to working together to make improvements in Clovis and believe our democratic decision should be respected.  PERB will notify us soon about next steps in the process.  We will keep you posted.

In the meantime, please fill out our survey, nominate colleagues for our ACE bargaining team, and let us know if you have any questions about our bargaining prep or any other part of the process!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Psychologist and MHSP Organizing Committee

Jade Edwards

Suja George

Cy Hiyane

Janet Ryska

Melissa Saunders

Tamara Soemali

PS-  A few questions came up in our survey responses from the first day that we wanted to answer.  Please let us know if other questions arise.

Can we continue to use our QIT process after we have a union contract?

Yes.  We can continue to use the QIT process once we are union.  In fact, educators often establish committees like our Quality Improvement Team in their union contracts. Importantly, putting QIT in our contract will help us ensure that we protect the positive changes to the QIT process that we incorporated at the end of last school year, including having representatives elected by their peers and ensuring a real voice in departmental decisions.  Otherwise a change in administration could mean a return to appointed team members and unsatisfactory progress.  Remember, our starting point for contract negotiations will be our current working conditions. We will work hard to protect those aspects of our current conditions that our colleagues value, such as QIT and MiCare.

How were your summer vacations?

We all had the opportunity to rest, relax and getaway for a bit all while making sure to continue the progress we made advocating for our fellow psychs and mental health professionals! Although summer break is never long enough, we're excited to be back with you and serving you the best we can in this capacity!  

Subject: Your ACE Psych/MHSP Bargaining Survey

August 2, 2021

Dear Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs,

Welcome back to school-- we hope your summer vacation was full of rest and relaxation!

We are excited to share our first ACE Psychologist and MHSP union bargaining preparation survey.  We want to make sure every one of our colleagues has an opportunity to provide input about our union contract goals-- including our current working conditions that we want to protect and those areas we want to improve.  This survey is also your opportunity to make nominations for our union bargaining team.  Whether you are part of the 75% of our colleagues who signed our ACE union support petition or not--your insights are valuable.  Please take some time to complete our survey this week.  

ACE Psychologist and MHSPs survey: https://forms.gle/SAqThrp1K6zK9vPX6

We also want to recognize those who came to our recent ACE question and answer session.  We are encouraged by all the offers of help and support and look forward to navigating this process together.  In fact, one of the questions on the survey is about your availability for upcoming ACE meetings to discuss our survey results and dig deeper into issues we want to address in our union contract.  We will announce the date(s) for those meetings after reviewing your availability.  If other questions arise in the meantime, or if you want to help prepare for our contract negotiations, please let one of us know.

Finally, a quick update about Clovis Psychologists for Clovis (CPC).  As many of you are aware, a few colleagues reached out to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), attempting to intervene in our unionization process by suggesting that CPC should be considered an alternative employee organization that seeks to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, we believe there are significant issues with their effort and have filed a motion with PERB asking for it to be dismissed.

We don’t anticipate the effort by CPC will lead to any significant changes in our bargaining preparation process and we hope to limit delays.  We expect a decision from PERB in the near future about whether their efforts will lead to a vote or be thrown out.  We will keep you posted!

If you have any questions, or want to help, let us know!  And make sure you fill out our survey soon!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Psychologist and MHSP Organizing Committee

Jade Edwards

Suja George

Cy Hiyane

Janet Ryska

Melissa Saunders

Tamara Soemali

July 21, 2021

Dear Clovis Psychologists and MHSPs,

We hope your summer vacation is going well and wanted to drop a quick note to keep you updated on our progress with ACE.

First, we wanted to thank our colleagues who participated in our ACE general meeting on July 6th.  We were excited that over 50% of you were able to attend during break!  For those who missed it, we had a productive discussion about the unionization process and our plan to make improvements in CUSD.  We asked colleagues to share additional questions as they came up, and have included those (edited for clarity), with answers, below.

Second, as we approach the start of the 2021/2022 school year, we look forward to getting ready for our union contract negotiations.  As mentioned in our last newsletter, our next steps include:

• Launching an ACE Psychologist/MHSP union bargaining survey in early August
• Holding union negotiation input sessions in mid to late August
• Nominating and electing ACE Psychologist/MHSP

bargaining team members in August/September

We are excited that many colleagues are stepping in to help guide our preparation for negotiations.   Please remember your input is important.

Third, it has come to our attention that a few colleagues associated with “Clovis Psychologists for Clovis” have reached out to the Public Education Relations Board, attempting to intervene in our unionization process.  Unfortunately, this is despite the fact that 75% of our psychologist and MHSP colleagues have already signed our ACE union support petition.

It appears that “Clovis Psychologists for Clovis” are advocating to maintain our status quo such as the Quality Improvement Team (QIT) which primarily provides us a voice within special education-- but does not extend to faculty senate representation, a say in general education issues, or provide other professional protections that would benefit our colleagues.  We just don’t think that maintaining the status quo is enough.

Though we support maintaining current structures like QIT, we believe more is needed to support our students and advocate for our professional needs.  Through ACE, we look forward to having a stronger voice in addressing issues related to our department, as well as our special education and general education programs.  Additionally, we are excited to improve salary and working conditions through union contract negotiations and look forward to greater transparency about district resources and department funding.  Furthermore, we are confident we will be able to include everyone’s input and establish a diverse and well represented group of school psychologists and MHSPs who will make responsible decisions as our union bargaining team.  Finally, we believe having access to liability insurance, individual legal representation, and other professional support through our union is important and will help us be successful.

We don’t anticipate the intervention by “Clovis Psychologists for Clovis” will lead to any significant changes in our bargaining preparation process.  There is a possibility that an election will take place.  There is also a possibility their intervention will be thrown out.  We will keep you posted if any new developments take place.

Fourth and finally, we will have another ACE meeting open to all psychologists and MHSPs on July 26th at 3pm-4pm. Zoom here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83691517234

If you have questions or want to help, please join us!

Sincerely,

Your ACE Psychologist and MHSP Organizing Committee

Jade Edwards

Suja George

Cy Hiyane

Janet Ryska

Melissa Saunders

Tamara Soemali

PS- Please read below for answers to questions that have been raised with us since our July 6th ACE Psychologist and MHSP meeting.  If you have any other questions that arise or want to know how to help, please reach out to any of us.

The Association of Clovis Educators (ACE) is affiliated with the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the National Education Association (NEA).  What will the role of NEA be with our department and/or our union contract negotiations?  

As ACE members, we will also be part of the National Education Association (NEA). NEA is a leading public education advocacy organization and the largest labor organization in the country, that provides important resources, trainings, grants, member benefits, and opportunities for professional development to educators across the United States.  ACE members will have access to these resources.

Additionally, the NEA plays a leading role in shaping federal education policies to benefit students and educators.  NEA members advocate for important issues such as improved Title I funding, anti-discrimination regulations, and the recent American Recue Plan (ARP) and Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), which are providing billions of much needed resources and funding to our nation’s public schools.

As an affiliate of the NEA, we will have access to NEA resources/expertise and can participate in the democratic governance of the NEA in formulating public policy decisions related to public education. While we will be members of the NEA, we have immense local control - the NEA will have no role in governing our day-to-day decisions or goals. Our negotiations team will be made up of Clovis Unified educators, with support from CTA staff. We do not expect to have a staff person from the NEA sit in on negotiations with Clovis Unified. To learn more about the NEA and the benefits offered, go here: https://www.nea.org/ 

How will unionization impact our designation as “certificated management” and will we lose any perks/benefits associated with that designation? For instance, we currently receive $100,000.00 life insurance policy while other employees have a $50,000.00 policy.

It would be illegal for CUSD to reduce any of our benefits (including our current life insurance policy, salary scale, etc) because we unionized.  This is true even if the district decides to change our designation from “certificated management” to some other term.  In fact, once we are union, administration cannot make any unilateral changes to our working conditions without negotiating with us.  That means our salaries, benefits, and other job responsibilities will remain as they are until we have negotiated our union contract.

What are mandatory subjects of bargaining, permissive subjects of bargaining, and the difference between them?

The Educational Employment Relations Act defines the scope of bargaining in California Government Code Section 3543.2: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=3543.2.&lawCode=GOV

Mandatory subjects of bargaining are those that CUSD is obligated to negotiate over in good faith should we decide to address them in our union contract.  Mandatory subjects include but are not limited to:

·       Safety conditions

·       Class sizes/caseloads/staffing

·       Hours of employment including how much prep time, the structure of our workday and length of our work year

·       Health and welfare benefits

·       Leaves

·       Assignments

·       Wages

·       Evaluation procedures

·       Causes and procedures for discipline

·       Causes and procedures for determining/avoiding layoffs

·       Procedures for processing grievances

·       Other issues reasonably related to conditions of employment

Permissive subjects of bargaining are those that we have the right to consult over.  Additionally, the parties can negotiate over these subjects if both parties agree to do so. They include issues such as:

·       Curriculum

·       Educational objectives

·       Textbook selection

How will unionizing impact the way we are assigned schools/job responsibilities?

We can address the process and criteria for determining job assignments in our union negotiations.  Whether we want to protect/memorialize the current process and criteria or make changes to make the process more transparent will be determined by our colleagues through our bargaining input process.

Is there a document or resource that could be shared directly from CTA regarding the differences between due-paying members and non-due-paying members? It's a lot of information to remember and I think a visual for our department to see would be beneficial.

Yes. See attached.

What role will Lead Psychologists/Program Specialists play in the collective bargaining/negotiation process? Would they be members of the bargaining committee?

Eligibility for our union depends on one’s job responsibilities.  As it pertains to lead psychologists and Program Specialists, eligibility would largely depend on the extent of their supervisorial responsibilities.  Specifically, an employee who has the unilateral ability to hire, fire, discipline, determine schedules, or provide the final say in evaluations, would not be eligible to be part of the union.  Employees who are not eligible to be part of the union would not be able to be on our ACE bargaining committee.  Some of our colleagues fall into a legal gray area based on their responsibilities.  We anticipate their eligibility will be more definitively determined in the coming weeks and certainly before our union negotiations start.

It is important to note we are certainly able to incorporate insights and input from colleagues we respect regardless of whether they are part of our union.

Once individuals are elected to be a part of the bargaining committee, how long do they serve? Is their term time-limited? Also, are members of the committee able to be removed by the district? Can they be removed by their constituents, if needed? 

Members of our ACE bargaining team will serve in that capacity while negotiating our first union contract.  They are accountable to our ACE leadership and our psychologist colleagues.  Subsequent ACE contract negotiations will require new teams to be chosen.  CUSD has no role in selecting our bargaining team members nor has any power to remove them.

Most processes regarding the union appear to be "majority rules." How is the voice of the minority going to be represented and advocated for? Decisions impact each individual and their families in different ways, so my hope is there are plans in place to protect and prevent negative impacts to all psych department members.

It is true that decisions in our union are made in a democratic manner.  We believe this is a bedrock value that provides our colleagues with a real say in decisions—a role that has often proved elusive in our district.  However, democracy does not mean disregarding minority voices.  That is why we are excited about having a robust input process that includes surveys, input meetings, and nominations of bargaining team members from our different program areas.  Importantly, we want input from all psychologists and MHSPs, including psychologists who didn’t complete the union support petition. It is also important to note that psychologists will be able to elect representatives on a 1:15 ratio by school site and by classification to be on the ACE Representative Council (the primary decision-making body of ACE) so that all voices are represented in ACE decisions.

After unionizing, will we continue to have seats on district committees such as EBC, LCAP, etc? Will QIT be collapsed? 

We will not lose seats on district committees because of our unionization.  Following unionization, we will evaluate which committees are productive with helping us make needed improvements.   We will then decide which committees make strategic sense to continue spending time on.  Importantly, by unionizing we will have more say in all areas of our working conditions through our union contract negotiations.  Additionally, CUSD will be legally required  to seek meaningful input from ACE during the LCAP process.

What is the status of ACE unionization for classroom teachers and other educators?

Classroom teachers and other Clovis educators continue to build support amongst their peers for unionization.  Much progress was made during the two months between the time that their ACE union support petition was launched in early April and the end of the school year.  There is support at every school site, an ACE organizing committee of over 70 educators, and conversations happening with colleagues every day.  Over the summer ACE organizing committee held an ACE Leadership Academy training and began meetings with administration to ensure ACE educators have a voice in decisions that impact their working conditions and classrooms.  Once school starts in the fall, we look forward to supporting classroom teachers and other educators as they continue to organize their union, advocate for improvements and work to reach the level of supermajority ACE support that we were able to achieve among psychologists and MHSPs.

June 30, 2021

Subject: News about our union--what’s next?

Dear Psychologist/MHSP Colleagues,

As you all know, we filed for union recognition on June 10th with nearly 75% of our Clovis psychologist and mental health support provider colleagues signing our union support petition.  While support from only 50% +1 of eligible psychologists/MHSPs is required to unionize according to the Educational Employment Relations Act (EERA), we felt strongly that it was important that a super majority of our Clovis colleagues supported this decision.  We are very proud that we achieved this and we are hopeful that the small number of psychologists/MHSPs that did not sign our petition will be involved in the process going forward as we prepare for contract negotiations.

So what happens next?  After a fifteen day posting period, the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) will compare our union support petitions to a list of eligible Clovis psychologists/MHSPs provided by CUSD.  Once they verify that we have majority support, they will issue a determination of majority support and at that point we would expect that CUSD will recognize our union.  This process typically takes approximately two months.

During that time, we want to prepare for our union negotiations while also ensuring that all of our colleagues have time to take a well deserved Summer break (after a very challenging year!)  To that end, we are planning the following:

• Launching an ACE Psychologist/MHSP union bargaining survey in early August
• Holding union negotiation input sessions in mid to late August
• Holding a question and answer session for Clovis psychologists/MHSPs on July 6th at 3pm (with future dates as needed) for those of our colleagues who have questions about the process, our next steps, or how they can get more involved.

If you want to help put together our union bargaining survey, please let one of your ACE Psychologist organizing committee members know.  

Finally, we have seen some questionable emails circulate over the last few days about our union.  We are disappointed by the tone of some of these messages.  We welcome questions and discussion, but believe our colleagues should keep the discourse civil and respect the democratic and legally protected process for unionization in California.

We look forward to working closely with all of you on these important next steps!

Sincerely,

The Ace Psychologist Organizing Committee

PS- Below are some answers to questions that have been raised.  If any other questions come up, please ask one of our ACE committee members and we will get back to you ASAP.

___________________

What is the process for Clovis psychologists to inform what we want to achieve in our union contract?

We will have a robust input process that includes surveys and input meetings (likely both zoom and in person).  Our plan is to launch our survey in early August and hold input meetings shortly afterwards.  We will collect both quantitative and qualitative data during this process.

Clovis psychologists will prioritize issues we want to address and a union bargaining team made up of our colleagues will negotiate our union contract.  We will have legal, strategic and financial analysis support from our union as well.  

It is very important that every psychologist is able to weigh in with their input regardless of whether they signed our union support petition or not.

What does the negotiations process look like?

Once we have gone through the comprehensive input process outlined above and our union is certified, we will begin contract negotiations.  We will propose improvements based on input we have collected from our colleagues.

Our psychologists union bargaining team (that will be nominated by peers) will meet with Clovis administration’s team and negotiate a contract that addresses our working conditions.  Both sides are legally required to negotiate in good faith. The starting point for negotiations is the current conditions--staffing, wages, benefits, workload, schedule, retirement, healthcare benefits--under which we are employed.  Once we are union there can be no unilateral changes to our working conditions.  We will have to be part of the decision making process.

Typically negotiations take place during work time, are very respectful, and continue over multiple sessions until agreement is reached.  If agreement is not reached, a state mediator will be assigned to help the sides reach agreement.  

How will our retirement be impacted by our unionization?

Retirement benefits are determined by a formula administered and governed by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS). There are no additional CalSTRS benefits due to the district’s designation of “Certificated Management.” The formula is the same for all CalSTRS members.  By forming a union, we will have the ability to improve our salaries through negotiations with the school district. This in turn will help us improve how much we earn in retirement, as the CalSTRS formula depends on salary, age at retirement, and years of service in the system during a member’s career. We’ve discovered our salaries are not as competitive as other districts, which means we’re getting hurt in retirement. Additionally, through unionization, we can negotiate additional sick leave days. Any unused sick leave days are credited towards service credit at the time of retirement.  

As it stands now, the District unilaterally determines what we collect in retirement because we have no say in the items that impact it, like salaries.

For information on how CalSTRS retirement benefits are calculated, follow this link:  https://bit.ly/3x7LRVN

Will we lose our current healthcare benefits because we unionized?

No.  The best way to protect what currently works in Clovis is to unionize.  Once we are union, changes can’t be made without negotiating with us.  If we want to protect—or even improve our benefits—we can prioritize that in negotiations.  

Unfortunately, we are currently facing increases to our premiums and changes to our provider network.  So the real risk to our benefits comes from doing nothing.

How will psychologists unionizing impact employees who work part time?

Part time workers will be eligible to be part of our union.  We look forward to working with our part time colleagues to make improvements through our union contract that will support their important contributions.

Will unionizing change our pay schedule?

Our current pay will be the starting point in our union negotiations.  If we decide improved pay is a priority during our input process, we will work to address that in our union contract.  There is no question our pay is lower than school psychologists in many other districts.

Someone started a rumor that some members of the ACE union organizing committee were getting paid.  Is that true?

No.  False.  It is unfortunate that anyone would spread such rumors.  The truth is, many of us have spent significant time and energy helping build our union because we believe it will prove to provide great support for our students and colleagues in Clovis.  

After we have a union contract, will all psychologists have to join ACE?

Each of our colleagues will be able to decide whether they want to be a union member.  The greater our membership and the more united we are as psychologists, the more we will be  able to achieve.  Our hope is that all of our colleagues will be active participants in our union.  But ultimately, that choice will be up to every individual.

Is it possible that some of our colleagues signed our union support petition to “get more information?”

Our ACE union support petition was very clear, concise and transparent.  It included the words “We the undersigned, therefore, choose the Association of Clovis Educators/California Teachers Association/National Education Association (ACE/CTA/NEA) to be our exclusive representative union and to represent us regarding our professional and employment relations with Clovis Unified School District administration.” We are quite sure that our colleagues who signed our union support petition were clear about what they signed. If someone signed up on our website for more information, that does not mean that they signed our union support petition.

How will our unionization impact future hires?

Psychologists that are hired in the future will benefit from the improvements we make in our union contract. Our students will best be served when we are able to recruit the best candidates.  We believe the improvements we make will help us recruit and retain great psychologists in Clovis Unified.

What is our relationship with the rest of the certificated educators in Clovis who are unionizing?

Classroom teachers and other certificated educators continue to build support for unionization.  Our hope is that they will file for union recognition soon.  In the meantime, we look forward to continuing to work with them to make our schools healthy environments where our students and colleagues can thrive.