Palos Verdes Faculty Association Negotiates for a Fair Contract
Recently, students have not been able to hold meetings in classrooms or contact their teachers after school, which sparked a rumor that the teachers are going on strike. However, this is not the case; teachers and staff who are members of the Palos Verdes Faculty Association (PVFA)–a union of teachers, counselors, nurses, speech language pathologists and other public servants that work in PVPUSD and are committed to promoting and preserving the collective voice of their members–are continuing to work amid negotiations with the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District (PVPUSD). The contract negotiation process started at the beginning of quarantine for the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which called for the shutdown of schools nationwide and the transition to online learning in March of 2020. Concurrently, the contract between the PVPUSD school board and its employees expired in July of 2020. The latter have continued working without a contract, which PVFA claims is due to PVPUSD delaying the negotiation process repeatedly over the course of the pandemic.
Since the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, these negotiations have been ongoing, with a renewed contract for staff in the district back on the table for negotiation. On Oct. 14, PVPUSD made their final offer of $8.5 million in new funding for employees that is pay-related, which refers to salary and benefits, such as insurance, raise and stipends. According to PVFA, PVPUSD’s last offer is still below the benefit caps and total compensation for other school districts in the South Bay. Although PVPUSD’s final offer came out to a total average compensation of $93,173 for PVPUSD employees, surrounding districts’ contracts offer upward of $100,000; Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s total compensation is $113,451 and Redondo Beach Unified School District’s is $111,728. As someone who has to provide for a family, Advanced Placement Physics C and Advancement Via Individual Determination teacher Mike Spalding believes that PVPUSD teachers deserve a competitive salary.
“I [do not] like thinking about the fact that we still have to negotiate for a fair contract because, as with many teachers on campus, it makes me feel undervalued by the people who run the district, which is ultimately the school board,” Spalding said. “I [do not] think teachers are asking for too much [because] what our bargaining team has requested is [not] unreasonable.”
Although PVFA matches PVPUSD’s final offer concerning benefits-related pay, the disagreement regards salary in their contracts. PVPUSD’s final offer includes a 3% on-schedule raise, which refers to a scheduled annual percent increase of one’s salary, as well as a 2% off-schedule raise, which is a negotiated raise that happens during bargaining between faculty and the school district. PVFA wants a 4.25% on-schedule raise, which is a 1.25% difference from what PVPUSD offers.
As of Oct. 21, the constant bargaining between PVFA and PVPUSD has reached an impasse, a state where both sides are unable to reach an agreement. In response, PVPUSD notified PVFA on Oct. 28 that they will move on to the next step, mediation, due to the lack of a settlement or agreement reached. This means that the Public Employees Relation Board (PERB) will send a mediator from the state on Dec. 10 to meet with both sides in order to try and find a compromise. On their website, PVPUSD expressed that their goal regarding the mediation process is to balance student needs with providing competitive salaries for their staff. PVFA has claimed that PVPUSD is not negotiating in good faith, as PVPUSD is hoping to engage in bargaining off the record, which is bargaining that is not legally binding. English 4 and Advanced Placement English Literature teacher Tim Coleman, who has been the president of PVFA since August of 2020, disagrees with the district’s decision to bargain off the record because he believes both sides should go through the entire negotiation process legally.
“The collective bargaining process is important because it allows districts and teachers to work through labor issues in a professional way,” Coleman said. “If the district has a proposal to make [regarding salaries], [they] can and should do so on paper as the PVFA does.”
If both parties are unable to reach a settlement in mediation, the mediator will notify PERB and the next step of the negotiation process may be requested from either side. This next step is Factfinding, in which a third-party panel hears evidence from both sides; this allows for PERB to issue a non-binding recommendation on the issues as the last stage of the process. Kelly Baranick, a school counselor and member of the PVFA bargaining team, has been part of the union for nearly two decades and believes that employees deserve the terms of their proposed contract.
“I have been a school counselor [at Peninsula] for 19 years and [I have] never seen it as a job [because] it has always been [my] way of life,” Baranick said. “[It is] hard to be in a situation where you [do not] feel valued. A lot of people understand that going into education [you are] never going to be a millionaire, but that still [does not] mean you [do not] deserve to be fairly compensated like the rest of the professionals in your field.”
