Vista Teachers get the shaft in lawsuit settlement

The North County Times has indicated that the CTA lawyers representing the Vista Teachers Association 'for free' have settled with the Vista Unified School District.
Read the article here: http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_f0705fa3-44e7-5158-a4a4-ccaa4a65c7b8.html?mode=story

The settlement is wrong and the Vista Teachers' Association should have insisted that the CTA continued to fight it.

The agreement for a release time president between the VTA and the district was BARGAINED. In bargaining the teachers give up on some of their requests and the district gives up on some of its requests. The teachers gave up a lot of other potential benefits that might have cost far more to get the release time president. Will the teachers get those back now that the district has "stolen" the value of the release time president and imposed a new 'tax' on teachers?

The release time president provision in our VTA contract was the same provision that dozens and dozens of other unions in large districts throughout the state had.

This provision in the contract COST THE DISTRICT NO MONEY. NONE. The payroll was the same with the president of the VTA in the classroom or in the VTA office. The only addition cost was the cost of the replacement teacher. Under the previous agreemetn VTA paid more than that cost.

Under this unfair settlement the teachers of the district will be SUBSIDIZING the district. The district will receive FAR MORE THAN the cost of the replacement teacher. That difference will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Every single teacher in the district will be paying an additional "tax" to the school district amounting to that difference in cost divided by the number of teachers.

Teachers lost a week of pay this year and now are hit with this new "tax."

Thanks to the dictates of highly unpopular VUSD superintendent Joyce Bales, teachers no longer have the authority to teach their classroom students according to the needs that they see in their classroom. They are forced to teach like robots the exact same thing on the same day and give the same test on the same day in every elementary classroom in the district. No individuality. No ability to respond to the individual needs of the UNIQUE children in their classroom. Now an additional tax.

The CTA and their lawyers, who represented our fine VUSD teachers, threw the teachers of our district under the bus. This should have been fought in the courtroom.

Mothers don't let your children grow up to be teachers.