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Union and district exchange proposals on planning time, personal leave and calendar procedures
Summary
Bargaining-unit representatives pressed for protections for embedded planning time, consecutive planning periods, limits on PLCs during short weeks, changes to personal leave exchange rules, and a formal mechanism to negotiate adverse-weather calendar changes; district offered counterproposals on some items.
Union negotiators proposed contract language aimed at protecting teacher planning time, clarifying the scheduling of professional learning communities (PLCs), setting procedures for adverse-weather calendar decisions, and changing personal-leave trade rules.
The union argued that planning time should occur during the student contact day and that planning periods be consecutive rather than split. “When your planned time is split, you are less efficient with the limited amount of planned time that you get,” a union representative said, noting examples of elective teachers who have split planning periods.
Negotiators discussed limits on PLC meetings during weeks with fewer than five student days or weeks with professional development so teachers can use planning time to prepare. The union also proposed adding a formal mechanism that would trigger discussions between the district and JCA when the level with the fewest built-in adverse-weather days (elementary) had used 80% of its allocated adverse-weather days; the proposal would create a ten-day window for surveying bargaining-unit members and returning input to the district before a final calendar decision.
On personal leave, the district proposed a counteroffer: the district would grant two additional personal days in exchange for a three-for-one deduction from accumulated usable leave (three accumulated days deducted for each additional personal day taken). Union members raised concerns about fairness and potential unintended consequences, such as incentivizing dishonesty or penalizing long-tenured employees who have banked leave for serious future needs.
District leaders said they would decline to add contract language on some worker-comp and return-to-classroom items but would accept other clarifying language and suggested posting forms on the employee website rather than embedding that requirement in the negotiated agreement. The parties also discussed resignations and liquidated-damages language; the district cited a 1981 court case as a reason to avoid including liquidated-damages provisions that appear punitive rather than compensatory.
Negotiators did not finalize contract text in this session; both sides identified items where they would prepare counters or clarifying language for the next meeting.
