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Union president urges board to protect students as trustees move into closed session on labor talks
Summary
At a special San Ramon Valley Unified School District meeting, the board voted 5-0 to adjourn to closed session for labor negotiations after Laura Finkel, president of the San Ramon Valley Education Association, urged trustees to avoid cuts that would harm class sizes and mental-health services and to pursue alternatives to a reported $26,000,000 shortfall.
At a special meeting of the San Ramon Valley Unified School District Board of Education, trustees voted unanimously to adjourn to closed session for labor negotiations after a public comment from the teachers’ union president urging the board to protect students from budget reductions.
Laura Finkel, president of the San Ramon Valley Education Association, used her allotted three minutes to press district leaders to exhaust alternatives before cutting classroom services. “When we go into labor negotiations as your labor partners with management, we go in there with the assumption and with the trust that we'll be given accurate information that allows us to make decisions at the table,” Finkel said. She added that surveys, town halls and the budget advisory committee repeatedly asked the district to “protect our students, especially their class sizes and their mental health services.”
Finkel told the board many of the proposed cuts in the approved reduction plan would “target our kids” and asked the district to “tier your cuts so that the last possible cuts are the ones that directly hit our kids.” She urged the board to examine specific spending areas, including what she referred to as “line item 5158 hundred” and the district’s reliance on outside contractors, and to explore revenue options tied to average daily attendance to help address a cited $26,000,000 shortfall. “Might just be one block at a time…chip away at that $26,000,000,” she said.
Board member Rachel Hurd moved to accept the closed-session agenda item 5.1, described on the agenda as "conference with labor negotiators" under Government Code section 54957.6. Board member Jesse Vanzy seconded the motion. The board conducted a roll call vote and the motion passed 5-0, with members recorded in the roll call as Bratt, Hurd, Van Zee, Ordway and Clark voting "Aye."
Before adjourning, the presiding officer identified negotiator CJ Camick and agency representative Melanie Jones on the agenda and noted the employee organization referenced in the record as “Serbia CSEA CEIU.” The board then adjourned to closed session to conduct the labor negotiations under the announced agenda item.
The meeting produced no public decisions on the record about specific budget reductions; the board’s next public action on the issue will depend on the outcome of the closed-session negotiations and any staff recommendations that follow.
