Taking a day or two off with no pay is causing another rift
between Morgan Hill Unified School District’s unions and
administrators.
Taking a day or two off with no pay is causing another rift between Morgan Hill Unified School District’s unions and administrators.
A district-wide one-day furlough, or day off without pay, would save $260,000. Up to two furlough days can be negotiated with the district’s three unions for a savings of $520,000. Only one of the three, the Morgan Hill Educational Leaders Association, which represents school principals, has wholeheartedly agreed to a furlough.
A furlough could curtail other district cuts approved in late March, including the laying off of four secondary school clerks, two custodians, four elementary library clerks and one district administrator. Teachers will also be laid off; the 60 who received preliminary notices await final word on May 14. Classified employees will receive their final layoff notice on April 29.
At tonight’s Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Trustees meeting, board members will again consider further cuts to close the $3.7 million gap in next year’s budget. These cuts include increasing kindergarten class size from 20 to 30, saving the district $160,000.
The district will also begin staffing to the state standard for speech therapists, or 55 students per therapist. Special education advocates and some district therapists have loudly decried this cut, which will save $460,000 per year. Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Tognazzini noted that, while the cut is being presented to the board as part of the whole budget tonight, the district office does not need the trustees’ blessing to staff to ratio.
“That’s happening,” Tognazzini said of the speech therapy cost savings. So even if unions agree to the furlough this will be cut.
SEIU President Pam Torrisi said her members want reassurance that a furlough would save jobs and that administrators are heaving as much of a burden as her custodians and clerks are.
Federation of Teachers President Donna Ruebusch said furloughs were included in a union proposal to the district on their as-yet-unsettled contract for this and the next two years; administrators have yet to respond to it. Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Jay Totter declined to comment on this, saying that union negotiations were confidential.
Echoing administrators in the district office, the Morgan Hill Educational Leaders Association have said they’re willing to take two furlough days and encouraged the other two unions to get on board.
Torrisi said an across-the-board day off without pay isn’t as equitable as it seems.
“The major problem is there’s a lack of trust of what would happen with (the money saved from) those days. Where’s that money going to go? Is it going to go to repay some of these funds that they’re borrowing from, or is it really going to come back to people?” Torrisi said, referring to the more than $2 million in one-time cuts the district has made to close next year’s $3.7 million gap. These cuts include deferring buying new textbooks for another year, using Redevelopment Agency funds and putting off building repairs.
If the trust issue were settled, SEIU would still have another problem with furloughs: its more than 300 members are having trouble coming to a consensus on whether or not they’d agree to one in the first place.
“We have strong opinions both ways,” Torrisi said. “Of course, people who have already been cut are saying ‘I’ve already given, I don’t want to give anymore.’ For example, the bus drivers had 55 hours a week cut from their week total in that division, so of course they’re not interested in giving anything else. Other people are looking at saving other people’s jobs.”
Like the Federation of Teachers, SEIU members suspiciously eye the district office and question whether it’s equitably staffed to ratio.
“The thing is, (administrators) may say that they’re on par with other districts, but as I have said before: they have done it with less people in the past, and they could do it again,” Torrisi said.
Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Michael Johnson, whose department has bore the brunt of these charges, has said his office is responsible for assuring that all district employees are meeting stringent county, state and federal standards.
Board President Don Moody said he’d rather not make any more cuts until the furlough issue were settled.
“I fully expect those furlough days to be blessed by the unions and the district office. I know that they’re not there yet but I have every expectation that they will get there. There’s too much at stake to not agree to it,” Moody said.
Moody questioned whether any more cuts would be approved tonight, but said that everything should be settled at a specially scheduled board meeting that will be held April 21.
