On Thursday, January 23, and Friday, January 24 our 30th and 31st contract negotiation sessions were held.

Thursday January 23, 2025:

The district reiterated that its top priority is to increase the wages for its lowest-wage workers. Under the district’s current financial proposal, paraprofessionals would receive an average increase of $8,500 by the end of the contract.

The district also shared that the current BTU financial counter of up to $500 million does not match the reality of the district’s current financial situation. The district shared that any financial proposal from them will lift up the lowest wage workers and additional increases must come with reforms to best serve our students and families.

Over nearly a year of negotiations, on multiple occasions, the district's bargaining team asked the BTU to narrow their proposals to a complete list of priorities. On December 12th the BTU shared a narrower list of over 30 priorities.

In Thursday’s session, the BTU presented a settlement agreement in response to the district requesting a complete list of BTU priorities.

The document that was shared reserved the BTU’s right to add other proposals and stated that “if the parties do not reach agreement on those items identified as BTU priorities, the BTU will continue to pursue its other Proposals.”

The district thanked the BTU for the comprehensive list, which included the multiple tentative agreements. In response, the district shared that some proposals are not operationally feasible nor under consideration. However, the negotiating teams are close to an agreement or continuing to pursue possibilities on the majority of the proposals. As a result, the district presented several counter-proposals on specific topics:

• Written Description of Hours and Pay for Current and New Employees
• Safety Protocols
• Nurses Prior Employment Experience Salary Credit (Tentative agreement reached)
• Election to Work Agreements Publicly Posted Online
• Restorative Justice Positions
• Responsive Schedules for Librarians

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Friday, January 24, 2025

The district and the BTU hosted a productive five-hour negotiation session that included a small breakout group that worked on our proposals regarding multiple licenses. The BTU shared counter-proposals and/or responses on some topics from the previous session:

• Written Description of Hours and Pay for Current and New Employees
• Safety Protocols
• Restorative Justice (RJ) Positions

As both parties continue to work on these topics, the district feels the parties are close on two of them: Hours and Pay and RJ Positions. Both parties agree that safety protocols are a priority and are discussing what problem we’re solving, with school examples, so we can better understand how to formulate contract language.

A priority for both parties is to write out the working conditions for BTU members who are centrally employed and have different work schedules and work years compared to school-based employees. A more comprehensive proposal is being worked on, but for one group of employees, we are close to an agreement.

Newcomers Assessment and Counseling (NACC) Center Research and Assessment Specialists play a critical role in providing language access testing for our students so that they receive the appropriate school placement and support. The NACC testers work 6.5 hours a day 202 days a year (compared to 183 for school-based employees and 225 for managerial positions). They receive a ten percent differential to work 202 days and their current schedule is 9:00am -3:30pm.

Currently, NACC testers do not work between the last day of school and July 31st. This creates a significant backlog of students in late summer who require testing before school begins. At the start of School Year 23-24 there were nearly 300 students who were waiting for testing appointments before they could start school.

To best serve students and to ensure they are placed as soon as possible, the district proposed to schedule the NACC staff over 12 months of the year. This would not add any workdays but rather allow for more strategic scheduling with the current staff to cover certain days of the week during the month of July. The district shared that the busiest time for testing is August, September, January and February, while other months are slower and don’t require the capacity of all eight employees.

When this was first presented in October the BTU expressed satisfaction with their current workday and work year but understood the need for flexibility. They were not looking for a change in their workday or work year, but after some back-and-forth across a few negotiation sessions, the BTU and the district have come very close to an agreement to ensure we can provide testing services to students year-round. On Friday, the BTU provided a counter and the district responded. We expect at our next session the BTU will share their latest counter-proposal.

This proposal is a great example of when we work together we can ensure we provide fair working conditions for our employees and better operationalize our system to better serve our students and families.

The district and the BTU were also able to reach a tentative agreement that solidified the working conditions of our Supervisors of Attendance. We continue to work on the other groups of centrally employed BTU members who work beyond the 183-day school year.

Our next bargaining session is scheduled for Thursday, February 6th.