APS board approves three union contracts just ahead of new school year

On the eve of the new school year, the Albuquerque Public Schools board approved three contracts aimed at boosting pay for many school employees, adjusting for the extra time students will spend in classrooms this year and — hopefully — retaining employees.

“It’s a good way to start, putting our best foot forward,” board President Yolanda Montoya-Cordova told the Journal after the votes. “I appreciate the effort and the work that everybody did.”

The board’s approval on Wednesday of the contracts — for educators, maintenance and operations workers and food service employees — came after an hour-long meeting behind closed doors “to discuss collective bargaining strategy.”

The teachers union and district announced a tentative agreement on the contract last week. Union members had from Monday to the start of the board meeting, at 5 p.m. Wednesday, to ratify the agreement.

Albuquerque Teachers Federation President Ellen Bernstein said the members who voted on the contract ratified it overwhelmingly. The school board passed it on a split 4-3 vote. The maintenance and operations and food services contracts were each passed unanimously.

Each contract affects hundreds, if not thousands, of employees. The teachers union bargaining unit is over 6,250 educators strong, and the maintenance and operations and food service bargaining units have about 775 and 390 employees, respectively.

Included in the teachers’ contract is language Bernstein has said addresses concerns voiced by the union earlier in the year that some teachers would lose the paid time they get for duty by providing supervision stipends for which they can volunteer.

Still, board member Barbara Petersen said she had some lingering concerns about that “bell-to-bell” issue, saying it still could impact how teachers’ professional development pays off because they may not have time to collaborate with others and fit that training into their classes.

“The extended day is creating huge issues,” she said. “It’s going to be a hard year.”

The teachers’ contract also includes 6% raises for educators — as budgeted for all public school employees by state lawmakers earlier this year — along with adjustments to sick leave for educators and improved pay differentials for most types of coaches, which is money paid to school staff for additional duties beyond their main job.

Split vote

The teachers’ contract didn’t pass without some contention.

In a discussion reminiscent of about a year ago — when the board controversially tabled a vote on the teachers’ contract over issues with language involving educators’ freedom to exercise their professional judgment in academic issues within the limits of Common Core State Standards and other guidelines — some board members voiced concerns over a memorandum of understanding in the contract centered on standards-based teaching.

Citing a report produced by an outside company the district worked with that found APS had a “lack of instructional rigor and inconsistent academic expectations across schools and classrooms,” board Secretary Courtney Jackson said the memorandum of understanding failed to take substantive steps toward teaching grade-level content to all students.

“I was hopeful that the memorandum of understanding would have an action step to it,” she told the Journal. “There wasn’t. There’s no strength behind the terminology that is used … It translated to words of collaboration with no requirement that an action happens.”

But Bernstein said the memorandum was the district’s interest, not the union’s, adding that its commitment to collaboration is “the best way to make sure what you create is useful and has a positive impact in the teaching and learning going on in the classroom.”

The memorandum’s language includes agreements to work collaboratively on things like supporting equitable access to grade-level standards and reviewing and revising APS Common Core standards. Bernstein said that will take place over the course of the school year.

“I think this is another blow of disrespect, when something as simple as working collaboratively on teaching and learning is controversial,” she said.

Other agreements

Under both contracts approved by the school board Wednesday for maintenance and operations and food service workers, employees also received 6% raises across the board.

But especially when it comes to maintenance and operations employees, which include people who work on the district’s HVAC systems, Paul Aguilar, president of the local chapter of Communications Workers of America, said it’s still not enough to curb one of the biggest challenges facing such employees — retaining staff.

For example, he told board members the ranks of HVAC once used to number around 50 employees. Now, he said, that number is closer to 10 or 12, and the district is now contracting out most of the work it needs done on its systems.

He added that food service workers are also in need of an improvement in their working conditions — which raises, he acknowledged, will help with.

“The 6% — although it is good, and we’ll always take it — it’s still not enough to put us in competition with the outside entities in the private sector,” he said.

The maintenance and operations contract includes new language requiring the district and union to negotiate when APS determines it needs to eliminate a position, and allowing for improved pay for positions that are difficult to recruit for, like HVAC sheet metal technicians.