By Trudy Stephenson Willis
 |
| Leading the Colton march are CTA Board member Mikki Cichocki, CTA President Barbara E. Kerr and ACE President Ken Johnson. |
More than 1,000 Colton teachers and community members held a rally Sept. 21 to mourn the death of quality education in Colton Joint Unified schools. They brought along a hearse and set up a mock graveyard to drive home their point.
CTA President Barbara E. Kerr joined teachers in marching to the rally and brought word of CTA’s support for efforts by the Association of Colton Educators to fight increases in class size and win respectable salaries.
“Superintendent Dennis Byas is killing quality education here by trying to increase class sizes, mismanaging the district’s budget and chasing quality teachers out of Colton,” says ACE President Ken Johnson.
Currently the district and its employees are at impasse on negotiations for the 2005-06 school year.
“We are fighting a superintendent and a board whose priorities are misplaced,” says Johnson. “Instead of making students and teachers a priority, their focus is maintaining huge budget surpluses which continue to grow year after year. The district claims that they are unable to afford to fund a decent salary increase without take-backs, yet they chose to increase their reserve for economic uncertainties from 3 percent as the state recommends to 5 percent. For this year alone, the difference between 3 percent and 5 percent is $3.7 million.”
Year after year the district loses qualified and experienced teachers to surrounding districts where they are better compensated and treated with respect, says Johnson. “The mass exodus of teachers is not seen as a problem. In fact, the district has let it be known that it doesn’t care if it’s competitive with surrounding districts.”
In addition, the district claims it sees no educational benefit in the district’s K-3 class size reduction program.
The district is saying it would have to eliminate the class size reduction program and move to a two-tiered benefits package, which gives new employees less than current employees, to come up with a respectable salary increase. Even with the take-backs and over 14 percent in new monies, they are offering employees only 7 percent for ’05-06 and ’06-07 combined.
Earlier this year, the school board was proposing adding new assistant superintendents to an already top-heavy district office. Now, says Johnson, they’re saying they did not budget for employee salary increases.
The school board, he says, allows the superintendent to run the district like a corporation. The former assistant superintendent of business, Byas has apparently not let go of controlling the district’s finances. The district is on its fifth business manager in recent years.
“The board is apparently unaware of the collective bargaining process,” says Johnson.
“When we organized to combat the unfair offers, the superintendent filed an unfair labor practice charge against us.”
Attempts to address the board have left it unmoved. In fact, at the last meeting, board members made front-page headlines by walking out as teachers filed through the meeting room in an orderly manner.
The chapter has the “wisdom to understand and predict the strategy of the district,” says Johnson. Best of all, chapter members and the community “are supportive and continue to stand with us as we fight to maintain optimal conditions for teaching and learning in our schools.”
