GEA presents 2026–27 meet-and-confer agreement; staff voting open through April 1

Elizabeth Seifter, a representative of GEA, and Tara Burnaby, principal of Harold W. Smith, presented the Glendale Elementary District’s proposed 2026–27 meet-and-confer agreement and asked district employees to vote on the proposal by April 1, 2026.

Seifter said the bargaining team used an employee survey to guide talks. "First, we would like to share some of the key survey results that helped us guide our conversations this year," she said, and added that the top two compensation priorities if additional funding were available were "retention stipend and longevity pay." She noted the association recommended a retention stipend for the 2025–26 school year that would be tiered by years of service.

The proposal also responds to working-conditions concerns raised in the survey, Seifter said, with student discipline and general satisfaction with working conditions appearing among the highest-priority issues.

Burnaby described several revisions and new commitments in the agreement. She said the district clarified site-committee language so each school’s identified committee — whether a site learning team, council or other body — will include related-arts and other teams when monitoring budgets, inventory and alignment with goals. "Our committee has revised this to add a bullet point which states include related arts, sales, and other teams," Burnaby said.

The presentation proposed an annual review of the decompression study that the agreement said began implementation in 2023. "We are revising that agreement to include review annually the need for a decompression study," Seifter said.

Burnaby also called for updates to the district’s behavior matrix to include restorative practices and to expand CPI (crisis prevention/intervention) training focused on de-escalation strategies so more staff receive the training.

Both presenters outlined items the district said are already in progress: visiting schools during professional-development time to share benefits information; researching an employee-discount childcare center; coordinating with behavioral-health and school-safety staff to increase family-facing class offerings; and reviewing related-arts staffing to better meet needs in self-contained programs. Burnaby added operational steps on class assignments and training logistics, including communicating with the language-acquisition department about ELD class size before assigning another ELD teacher and scheduling a full day of CPI training for self-contained special-education EAs.

"Now we need to hear your voice. Please scan the QR code or click on the link to vote," Seifter said. Voting must be completed by Wednesday, April 1, 2026.

The presentation did not record any formal motion or vote at the meeting; presenters directed staff to submit their votes online by the deadline. The district and GEA team said the changes are intended to address retention, working conditions and training needs identified in the staff survey.