Jonathan Volzke of the Capistrano Insider has just reported that a “Tentative Agreement has been reached.” Teachers and students to return to their classrooms today.
The agreement:
Restoration of salary and furlough days as revenue increases
Health benefit POS rates based on district 2010 level of contributions instead of imposed 2009 level
Contract language that improves working conditions and that contain more objective surplus transfer language and improvement in leaves
A three year agreement with bargaining reopened in the 2011-2012 school year.
On the CUSD web site Jonathan reports:
We are pleased to announce that the Capistrano Unified School Distract Board of Trustees has reached a tentative agreement with the Capistrano Unified Education Association that completes the labor negotiations process through June 2012.
We look forward to resuming normal school operations on Tuesday with our students and teachers.
The question is not who blinked first. The losers were our students as they return to school. Regardless of the spin, there were no winners last night.
Jesus Larry, this is good news to celebrate. And you’re all “the losers were the students; there were no winners.” I guess that means you just don’t like how it turned out, that the Board didn’t crush the teachers once and for all.
The only loser here is me, who was getting ready to do a big exposé of this knuckledragging board. But congratulations to both sides for settling this thing!
Vern. I do have an opinion on this lost week in my school district.
Coming home from Ortega Highway yesterday I saw two dozen striking teachers carrying signs on the overpass of I-5. As a card carrying protestor myself, fighting eminent domain abuse where I have carried my share of protest signs, the fact remains that the District had to make some tough choices.
Isn’t life grand when you have more money in the bank than you know what to do with it, but when the checkbook runs out sacrifices need to be made.
Shortly thereafter, as I approached the intersection of Oso and Marguerite, I passed students holding signs supporting their teachers when they should have been in class.
I should have taken their names. We can use them in the next election.
We need board members who can be as tough as Margaret Tatcher..
I mean’t Thatcher:)
How could I forget the old witches name:)
I was hoping they wounld not give in to union thugs.
Now the thugs know that every time they are not happy with a deal they can strike and have things their way.
All it took was making the pay cut temporary instead of permanent. Why should they take a permanent pay cut if the economy picks up again in a couple years? If it doesn’t, they’ll just renew this. It’s a perfectly reasonable agreement. Why do you all hate workers and teachers so much? What kind of people are you?
Vern. We do not hate teachers. My daughter was a teacher in northern CA.
We have not discussed this collective bargaining issue.
Let me remind you that for the next two fiscal years the state will have $20 billion shortfalls. That said where will CUSD find a bucket of extra cash?
They accepted the cut till then, didn’t they? And in two years they’ll do whatever’s best for all concerned.
The unions and it’s members doing whats best for both sides? No matter how things are in two years we will still have threats from the union thugs. Work hard, perform well or leave. Stop demanding a job for life then sit on you @ss till retirement.
As a student, i find it shocking that the union was willing to disrupt the students’ education to protest a reasonable pay cut during tough economic times. Can they make it any more obvious they don’t care about the students, and more about their salaries and pensions?
Irvine reorter.
Excellent assessment. No need for me to add anything to your comment
“As a student, i find it shocking that the union was willing to disrupt the students’ education to protest a reasonable pay cut during tough economic times.”
So can you show us where, in all the boom times recently in South Orange County, that teachers have been rewarded when there were budget surpluses? Did they receive huge Christmas bonuses? Performance bonuses?
No, I thought not. Because teachers don’t benefit the same way the private sector does when things are good. In fact, increases in teacher pay over the last 15 have barely kept pace with inflation.
But when things are bad, teachers are expected to roll over and “sacrifice” like everyone else.
Not surprising really in a county that has always despised the working class.
” Can they make it any more obvious they don’t care about the students, and more about their salaries and pensions”
Also, forgot to mention, you almost sound like socialist here. You are suggesting that teachers put the collective good of students ahead of their own economic self-interest. This is anathema to the foundations of a free-market society, where pursuit of one’s self interest is not only sacrosanct, but necessary for growth and productivity.
But what you are saying is that teachers should be held to a different standard than say, businesspeople, who regularly negotiate salaries and compensation in their own economic self-interest. Stated otherwise, teachers should put the collective interests of students ahead of their own economic self-interests, but they should also expect to make the same sacrifices as those are more freely able to pursue these interests.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t advocate for a morality that ties teachers to larger collective interests on the one hand; but then throws them to the dogs in the vicissitudes of free-market individualism on the other.
And did you bother reading comments #11 and 12, Juice Brother? They seem pretty thoughtful and deserving of consideration.