Is the Vista School Board run by the VTA?

On the North County Times blogs following any article about VUSD, our ANTI friends accuse the four hardworking rational members of our school board of being "union puppets." They have said that the teachers now run the district. They accuse the good teachers who put in thousands of hours of hard political work on top of their classrooom load of being solely motivated by money. One of their bloggers Roxy says it was all about salary and perks. Let's examine that charge.

SALARIES

So do the VUSD teachers have the highest salaries in San Diego County? No, in fact VUSD teacher average salary is among the VERY LOWEST in the county. VUSD ranks 22nd out of 29 reporting school districts in San Diego. Only six school districts in all of San Diego County have teachers who make less on average than the teachers in VUSD. In addition only three districts in the county had declining salaries in 2008. VUSD was one of those and it declined by over 2%. The other two declined by less than 1%

http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=80478235118357

At one time in the 1980's VUSD teachers were third highest paid teachers in a unified district in San Diego County. The board at the time promised to always keep us at that level. Things certainly changed for teachers after our district was attacked by the ANTI forces, but they did not get better for teachers. One can only imagine how much worse it would have been if the ANTIs had succeeded with their stated goal of chartering every school in the district so that no two schools had teachers on the same salary schedule.

Imagine each set of school employees at each individual school in the district bargaining on their own. We would have been turned into thirty tiny little low paying districts. I am guessing with the local ANTIs hatred for VUSD teachers, we could have been the lowest paid in the entire state.

MEDICAL AND DENTAL COVERAGE

Our ANTI friends often complain falsely that we have a "Cadillac" medical and dental insurance plan.

Starting with dental, last year when I looked into this the total amount of dental work covered in dollars was exactly the same as it was ten years before. The prices for root canals, crowns etc has constantly increased with inflation during that time. As a result the teachers of VUSD pay more and more of a percentage of their dental work each year. Having once been on the district insurance committee and a board member of SCEET (our former medical trust/insurance company), I can assure you that dental coverage costs the district nearly nothing. It is by far the cheapest insurance benefit we have. By not increasing coverage for more than a decade, the district in effect makes money off the teachers and out of the teacher's salaries as compared to a decade ago.

Our medical insurance was shattered into several parts and coverages a few years ago. There were major problems with SCEET--an employee of SCEET in a VERY key position turned out to be unethical and dishonest. I think criminal charges should have been pursued but at the time it happened I was off the board out of the classroom and quite ill.

Prosecution did not happen but the problems lead to a decision by leadership to leave SCEET. Sadly leadership also decided to divide our membership into more than one coverage and more than one insurance carrier. This has lead to a situation where some paying far more than others for medical insurance. Teachers, who through no fault of their own are themselves or a family member afflicted with a catastrophic illness can pay ten of thousands of dollars in a year. Teachers who are currently healthy pay far less. The risks and uncertainties of life are no longer equally shared by all in our membership. In the past we were one family one group and we all shared those risks and gained benefits from promoting preventive screenings and early interventions--no more.

In the case of our family, a catastrophic genetic time bomb, left a previously healthy member of our family diagnosed with three autoimmune diseases in three years. With deductibles, co-pays, usual and customary fees set artificially low, monthly charges for the privilege of coverage and our family pays as much as $10,000a year out of pocket.

I know why should you pay for our bad luck? Because virtually all of us will have bad luck at some time in our lives, if we gather in a group and average the bad luck, it turns out far cheaper on average for the group to get insurance. It also saves someone in our VTA family from going very quickly from middle class to struggling financially. We are all one diagnosis from bankruptcy under the current system.

So we hardly have a "Cadillac" medical coverage and the "perks" that Roxy the blogger rants about on the North County Times Blogs.

CONTRACT

So we must have the best teacher contract in San Diego if we control the board, right?

No, we have NO CONTRACT CURRENTLY. It has been a year since we had a contract.

Negotiations go on but there is no resolution. The district offers nothing but take backs. We ask for a percentage of the COLA that the district gets from the state every year. NYET.

A COLA percentage request by the VTA is a token request. It is very equivalent to Oliver Twist asking, "please sir may I have some more."

In a fair world, the COLA money would be divided up into the same percentages as the current budget expenditures. If certificated (including all administrators) salary plus benefits is currently 55% of the budget, then 55% of the COLA should go into this budget category.

VTA is asking for far less, just a fraction of that amount. The answer from our "union puppets" is NO.


(By the way I am not sure of the current percent of the school district budget that goes to certificated salaries and benefits but I believe it is somewhere close to the 55% I mentioned above.)

TAKE BACKS

VUSD teachers lost more in salaries than any other district in the county last year. We lost over 2% of our salaries. Now the district has unilaterally decided to take back a buy back day next year which will reduce all salaries by approximately one half percent more. Those losses hardly sound like "the VTA is running the district."

NOTE: The facts and figures given to the school board during bargaining must go through and come from Dr. Joyce Bales. She and her Pueblo buddies decide what the School Board Members will know and what they will not. By controlling information, Joyce Bales controls the direction of bargaining and the possibilities available to the VUSD Board during bargaining.

She who controls the budget, controls everything.

Oversight of those who control this information is crucial. Lack of it can lead to disaster as the SCEET board found out a few years ago. I am glad that Jaka, Chunka and Herrera make the time in their busy days to try to understand the budget and go to budget meetings (unlike Gibson who never shows).