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Poway Unified, teachers reach tentative 2014-15 accord

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Teachers in the Poway Unified School District are being asked to vote on a tentative agreement which, if passed, will conclude 2014-15 school year contract talks.

The proposed agreement was signed on April 21 by Supt. John Collins and Candy Smiley, president of the Poway Federation of Teachers. It calls for 2.5 percent salary increases, retroactive to July 1, 2014. This would be in addition to a 1 percent increase already granted them in recognition of two additional days of work this school year.

The proposed agreement also calls for the district committing $1 million toward class size reductions in grades K-3 during the 2015-16 school year “in order to comply with state law requiring the district to reduce class sizes in these grades to 24:1 by 2021. The proposed agreement notes that in the event there are additional dollars from the state, secondary class sizes “may be considered as well.”

A third part of the proposed agreement calls for both the district and PFT to continue to use the Interest Based Problem Solving process outlined in the current PFT contract.

If teachers approve the contract during voting scheduled for May 12 and 13 the PUSD Board of Education will be asked to adopt it at the May 18 meeting. From there both the district and the PFT will begin discussions on the next three-year contract which goes into effect on July 1.

There are early indications that organized opposition to the 2014-15 contract is being generated by a new parents’ group.

A new website — www.pusdparents.org — was registered on April 30. The site is highly critical of Supt. John Collins’s performance in office and cautions the board not to approve the teachers’ contract because doing so would require the district to draw $8 million from its reserve fund, “further depleting or meager reserve fund to only $27M. This kind of deficit spending is simply unsustainable.”

(A district official said Wednesday that the agreement with the PFT, if approved, would cost the district $3.4 million.)

The website came to light Monday when school board member Charles Sellers reprinted its welcoming message and site address in an e-mail he sent to PomeradoNews with the subject line of: “Urgent action needed on PUSD budget crisis.” Sellers has been critical of the “me too” clause in the IBPS process where Collins, as the district’s chief negotiator, stands to receive whatever the teachers get in the approved contract.

Sellers said he has no connection with the website, which he said was launched by two parents from Rancho Penasquitos.

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