By Mary O’KEEFE

The Glendale Teachers Association and Glendale Unified School District are still in negotiations. The teachers’ current contract term was from 2017 to 2020; they are now negotiating wages going back to 2020-21.

This week teachers once again brought their concerns to the GUSD school board. Although many issues have been agreed upon there are still some sticking points between the two groups.

GTA members have taken their concerns to the board in the past and have reentered negotiations.

“On Oct. 18, the District removed the contingency around wages attached to the Association dropping three contract grievances. The District has not dropped the other contingencies attached to wages. Dec. 21 was our first mediation session with the state-appointed PERB mediator since GTA declared impasse in November. So traditional negotiations sans the mediator have not occurred since Nov. 8 when both sides met and no progress was made. [On Wednesday] GTA and GUSD met for the second day with the state-appointed mediator in order to reach a settlement,” stated Christopher Davis, GTA president.

According to Davis, there were two new proposals added by the District during contract talks. No. 1: Coaches should not be paid to attend certain trainings during time outside the contract day (GUSD introduced this on Sept. 9). The District would consider that the stipend that is already paid coaches would also encompass time spent on any trainings outside the contract day that are required by the California Ed Code, Title V of the California Code of Regulations and CIF.

No. 2: Introduced first on Sept. 23, remove contract rights that determine non-work days for Child Development and Child Care (CDCC) teachers.

According to GTA, the District is proposing to remove contact language that gives all secondary teachers the right to a preparation period on a daily basis.

“The contract currently guarantees that all secondary teachers (with the exception of Clark Magnet H.S.) have a daily preparation time. The District’s proposal does not take away prep time, which is currently two periods out of the seven period day in the seven-period schedule. However, the GUSD proposal allows the District to assign a teacher those two class periods of preparation time on one day rather than spreading out the prep so that a teacher has a daily prep period. That would mean a teacher would have two periods of prep on Tuesdays and Thursdays and no prep periods on Wednesdays and Fridays. So if a teacher needed to contact parents, talk to a colleague about an instructional issue, do some lesson planning or assessment – all the types of things teachers do with their prep time – then they would have to find time early in the morning to do that or after school had ended,” Davis stated.

GUSD stated its first mediation session was on Dec. 21, 2022 and the second one was on Wednesday. GUSD released a statement concerning the negotiations and demonstration:

“Glendale Unified strongly believes there is a good faith contract offer on the table; we look forward to the transparent review of the outstanding items by the mediator and are hopeful that this process will bring this nearly year-long negotiation to a swift close.”