Dear Unite Summit members:

We are excited about the next steps with our union.  We believe an empowered teacher community and a strong union contract will help reduce turnover, create more stability, and make our schools even better. There are many ways to be involved in the next steps of the process.  If you have questions, or want to help, please let us know!

Attend a bargaining input meeting!

If you have not yet had a chance to fill out the bargaining prep survey, please do so ASAP – bargaining input meetings start this week! We’d like to have as much data as possible to inform our work together; everyone’s voice is valuable!

You can find the survey at: https://tinyurl.com/y2bkw6ag.

Bargaining input meetings will be scheduled for each site starting this week and continuing into next week. Please reach out to your site organizers for details; you should be receiving communication from them very soon if you have not already!

These meetings will be a chance to discuss our bargaining prep survey results and add further perspective about what issues we should prioritize going into bargaining. You will have a chance to give input into how we elect our bargaining team and to offer nominations. About 50 people have been nominated so far!

If you can’t attend your site’s meeting but would like to give more input than you were able to give on the bargaining prep survey, contact your site organizers or email unitesummitteachers@gmail.com.

Here’s a draft agenda for the bargaining input meetings:

1. Timeline: How did we get here?
2. Overview of Bargaining Process
3. Bargaining Team Proposals
4. Bargaining Survey Results
5. Bargaining Brainstorm
6. Next Steps
7. Questions & Concerns

Answers to frequently asked questions:

How can I support contract negotiations?

There are a few different ways to get involved:

1. Fill out the bargaining survey and attend an input session to share your ideas and priorities for our contract.

1. Run for the bargaining team. We will have an elected bargaining team; the bargaining team is the group of teachers that will write contract proposals and sit down and negotiate with network admin. if you are interested in being on the bargaining team (or know a coworker who you think would be great) there’s a space for nominations on the bargaining survey. We will also be taking nominations at the bargaining input sessions.

1. Volunteer to join the contract action team. There will be people on the contract action team from each school site who will help support the bargaining team by keeping their school sites updated about what’s happening in bargaining and bringing feedback and input from their school sites to the bargaining team.  

Why did we choose to affiliate with the California Teachers Association?

We’ve been clear from the very beginning — and explicitly stated on our unionization petition — that we will be joining the California Teachers Association. We are proud to be joining the 250+ charter schools that are already a part of CTA. By affiliating with CTA, we are able to be part of a broader movement of union charter educators, whose experience and support will be crucial as we negotiate our first contract. We’ll also be part of a larger organization of educators that is advocating on issues we all care about, like more school funding. Importantly, while we are part of a larger organization that is supporting us with resources and staff and connecting us with other charter educators, as Unite Summit we will negotiate our own contract, write our own bylaws, and elect our own leadership.

“When I think of the most important Union value exercised by my charter school members, I think of workplace democracy. It’s the workplace freedom and security of voicing opinions, fearless advocacy, and the power to determine your working conditions. If we believe ALL educators deserve a voice in their working conditions, and should feel safe in advocating for themselves, their students, and the communities they serve, we must truly mean ALL. Charter educators included.”
–Angel Maldonado, President of Asociación de Maestros Unidos/CTA/NEA (the union of charter educators at Green Dot).

How does our union impact the current compensation plan discussed during the State of the Organization PD?

During our compensation discussion in All-org PD, many were wondering how formation of Unite Summit may affect the previously agreed-upon pay structures. Current processes freeze (stay consistent), and are not inhibited by our union. In other words, any raises for next year that we were promised before we formed our union stay in place. We will negotiate any changes to our current pay structure during contract negotiations, and all members will have the chance to vote on the whole contract before it goes into effect.

These slides address additional questions we’ve received. Check them out if you’re seeking further context! (Slides can be found at tinyurl.com/introducingUS.)

Success stories from other union charter schools:

By unionizing, charter educators have won big improvements in working conditions and a greater say in decisions at their schools.  Some examples success stories include:

Union of Foundation Educators: At the Foundation for Hispanic Education (three charter schools in San Jose), teachers were particularly concerned about parental leave. Teachers supported their union bargaining team – they even showed up at school board meetings with their babies to talk about why this issue was so important to them. Ultimately, teachers won eight weeks of fully paid parental leave (without having to use any of their sick days) plus additional job protections if they wanted to take a longer leave. By being unified, teachers won!

“Unionizing our mostly Latinx charter school was the best decision we have collectively made as teachers of color. Not only did we secure benefits and a fair salary schedule, we protected our small class sizes, and equalized salaries to close the gender wage gap. Best of all, we ensured lactating teachers would have a pumping space that exceeds minimum law requirements, and provided our teachers with 8 weeks of full pay for maternity leave, also securing job protection for up to 6 months to be with their babies! Unions keep good teachers working with the students who need us most.”

Envision United: Educators at Envision schools in the Bay Area unionized because they saw too many of their colleagues burning out and leaving. In order to reduce turnover, Envision educators negotiated a contract that lowered the number of required after school activities and gave teachers extra stipends (from $1,000-$3,000) the longer they stayed with Envision.

Stay tuned to www.unitesummitteachers.wordpress.com for further updates. You can also reach us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com if you have questions or want to help with the next stages of building our union. Thank you for joining us in these exciting efforts to improve our schools in the service of students and teachers!

Dear Unite Summit members:

We are excited about the next steps with our union.  We believe an empowered teacher community and a strong union contract will help reduce turnover, create more stability, and make our schools even better. There are many ways to be involved in the next steps of the process.  If you have questions, or want to help, please let us know!

Next steps:

We filed for union recognition with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) with over 75% support of our SPS colleagues in early January.  PERB is the California government agency that oversees labor relations for both public charter and district schools in California. Over the next month, PERB will review our union support petitions and compare them with a list of eligible SPS employees provided by administration.  Once they have determined there is majority support (legally only 50% +1 is required), PERB will move to certify our union Unite Summit/CTA/NEA.

While PERB is facilitating the legal process, we want to begin preparing for our union contract negotiations.  That includes four important steps:

1. We have launched a union bargaining survey (see below). Our goal is to have high participation from across our schools.  Importantly, you are encouraged to complete the survey whether you signed the union support petition or not.  Everyone’s input is important!
2. We are aiming to schedule bargaining input meetings at each site during the last week of February / first week of March, and we’re hoping to have as much survey data as possible to inform those meetings. Everyone is welcome! Please check with your site team for details.
3. We will be choosing a representative bargaining committee to help lead our union team in negotiations over our union contract.  The goal is for the bargaining team to have representatives from our different school communities and academic areas.

Once we are done with the surveys, bargaining input meetings, and bargaining team selection, the bargaining team will begin putting together our union proposals.  Over the course of negotiations, the union bargaining team will have lots of opportunities to get additional input from all of our colleagues.

Seeking your input on the bargaining survey!

If you have not yet had a chance to fill out the bargaining prep survey, please try to do so Friday, Feb. 22. You can find the survey at: https://tinyurl.com/y2bkw6ag.

It is up to all of us to keep our union strong and our mission clear- we are here to better our campuses for the benefit of all students and teachers. This survey is your chance to suggest what issues we should prioritize during the contract negotiation process, and it’s also your chance to nominate members from your site to join the bargaining committee. Participation is key! Please make your voice heard.

Office Hours during PD Week: Room D5

On Tuesday, Feb. 19 and Wednesday, Feb. 20, members of the Organizing Committee will hold Office Hours to address any questions you might have about our union. The Organizing Committee is comprised of educators from each school in our network.  Please come ask us about your union or find out ways you can help!

We will hold Office Hours at Summit Shasta in room D5 during the following times:

*8:15 to 9 *Lunch *3 to 3:45

Answers to frequently asked questions:

Why unionize now?

Teachers have voiced concerns to SPS administration for years, and we feel as if we have not achieved change on two major issues: student support services and work-life balance. The primary goals of our unionization process are to support students through increased access to mental health services and better training for mentors and to improve work-life balance to increase teacher retention and reduce the high cost that turnover takes on students. Survey data shows only 56 percent of SPS teachers are definitely planning to return next year. We want to provide increased support and stability for our students and their families, and we believe acting collectively through the negotiation of a union contract is the best way for us to make progress on those goals.  

When do we start paying dues, and what do our dues pay for?

SPS educators will have a chance to join our union at the end of the negotiations process.  Once you have signed up as a member, you will begin paying dues to support your union. Dues are approximately $80-90 a month and go to support your Local (Unite Summit), State (California Teachers Association) and National unions.  Members start paying full dues after they have voted to ratify their contract (and can evaluate the improvements they have made through collective bargaining). 

Local dues are used to help support union meetings, trainings, materials, and release time for SPS educators elected to our union leadership team. Dues that go to our statewide and national organizations are used for legal support (all members have access to attorneys), liability insurance, member representation, trainings, conferences, organizing (dues of other CTA members are supporting our unionization), as well as efforts to better fund all public schools.

These slides address additional questions we’ve received. Check them out if you’re seeking further context! (Slides can be found at tinyurl.com/introducingUS.)

Success stories from other union charter schools:

By unionizing, charter educators have won big improvements in working conditions and a greater say in decisions at their schools.  Some examples of these improvements include:

• Job Security: Many union charter educators have established a fair and transparent process where discipline and termination can only happen for demonstrated cause after a two-year probationary period.  This means educators are free to speak up about important concerns without fear of retaliation or not being rehired.
• Work/life Balance: Union charter educators have won reductions in work duties, reductions in class size caps, reductions of total workdays over the school year, and increases in preps. Together such improvements make our work more sustainable over the long term.
• Improved Salary and Benefits: Charter educators have won big increases in salaries and improvements in benefits through unionizing.  While few educators chose this profession to get rich, being able to afford living in the Bay Area while teaching is hard to do if our salaries don’t keep up with cost of living increases.
• Voice in Decisions that Impact our Classrooms: Many charter educators have won a greater role in decisions about which new programs should be introduced to their classrooms.  This is important as sometimes network administration implements new policies that seem disconnected from on-the-ground learning needs.  

Since August 2018, educators at nine other charter schools in California have unionized: Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz; Gompers Preparatory Academy in San Diego, and the seven Education for Change schools in Oakland. They join the close to 275 union charter schools in California. Charter educators at these schools organized for many of the same reasons that we unionized at Summit, including a desire to reduce teacher turnover and increase teacher voice in important school decisions.

Stay tuned to www.unitesummitteachers.wordpress.com for further updates. You can also reach us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com if you have questions or want to help with the next stages of building our union. Thank you for joining us in these exciting efforts to improve our schools in the service of students and teachers!

Dear Unite Summit members:

Bargaining Survey goes live

We are currently gathering input on our bargaining priorities, and we want to make sure your voice is heard!

In order to participate, please fill out the following bargaining prep survey.

This survey is your chance to suggest what issues the union should prioritize during the contract negotiation process, and it’s also your chance to nominate members from your site to join the bargaining committee. Participation is key! Please make your voice heard.

Office Hours during PD Week

On Tuesday, Feb. 19 and Wednesday, Feb. 20, members of the Organizing Committee will hold Office Hours to address any questions you might have.

We will hold Office Hours at Summit Shasta during the following times:

*8:15 to 9

*Lunch

*3 to 3:45

We will send an update in the next newsletter regarding the exact location of these Office Hours. Please join if you have any questions you’d like an organizer to address. We’re here for you!

Stay tuned to www.unitesummitteachers.wordpress.com for further updates. You can also reach us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com if you have questions. Thank you for joining us in these exciting efforts to improve our schools in the service of students and teachers!

Dear Unite Summit members:

Thank you so much for supporting our efforts to unionize Summit Public Schools! A supermajority of SPS teachers have signed a petition to form our union, and we have filed it with the Public Employment Relations Board. We hope this newsletter provides you with helpful information about what comes next. We have also created a website to provide timely updates. You can contact us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com if you have further questions!

We want to emphasize that the goal of our teachers is to create the best possible learning environment for all students by working in a cooperative manner with Summit’s leadership. In order to do so, we want to engage in a positive and persistent discussion of the issues that students, teachers, support staff, and leaders experience while at Summit’s schools.

Our list of concerns is still in draft form, and we want to solicit as much input as possible from Summit teachers as we move into the bargaining phase. At the top of our current list is adequate staffing for our schools, including mental health services for all students. We believe that Summit can and should prioritize the health and wellness of its students when making budgetary and staffing decisions. We also believe that our students are hurt when high teacher turnover interrupts our mentorship model. We would like to explore the root cause of our retention struggles and propose proactive solutions that respect work-life balance and treat teachers as professional educators.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the unionization process, here’s a brief summary of the steps:

1. Build a representative organizing or steering committee of educators.
2. Build supermajority support for unionization by asking colleagues to sign a union support petition.
3. Submit our union support petitions to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) and be officially recognized as a union. Go public and let administration know of our decision to unionize.
4. Negotiate a union contract with administration that improves learning and teaching conditions at our school.

We have completed steps 1-3! We are now waiting for PERB to certify our petition. In the meantime, our next step is to solicit input on bargaining priorities and elect a bargaining team. Stay tuned for information about bargaining input meetings and a bargaining survey.

How do we bargain a union contract?

Once we have followed the steps outlined above, administration is legally obligated to negotiate in good faith. This means they can no longer make unilateral changes to working conditions without negotiating with our union. We will soon elect a diverse group of representatives from different schools and subject areas to be on our union bargaining team. That team will gather input from all our colleagues through meetings and surveys. They will then use that information as they negotiate our union contract. Contract negotiations typically take place during the school day and union bargaining team members will be provided with substitutes for their classes. Union charter educators will have close mentorship and support from experienced union organizers and negotiators during this process.

What about dues?

Charter school educators who are unionizing do not have to start paying dues until they have voted to approve their first union contract. That way you can weigh the improvements we have made in our contract against the cost of the dues.  

What if administration does not support our efforts?

Under California law, it is illegal to discriminate against educators who are participating in unionizing their school. Participating in organizing the union is legally protected activity. Threats, intimidation or retaliation are prohibited. Please report any such activity to unitesummitteachers@gmail.com so we can promptly address the issue.

Are we alone in this?

Absolutely not. There are over 250 union charter schools in California. Over 40 have unionized in the past four years. Educators at Bay Area charter schools such as Envision Education, East Bay Innovation Academy, Foundation for Hispanic Education, and Community Learning Center Schools have recently won strong union contracts that have addressed workload issues, improved pay and helped retain quality teachers.

Stay tuned to www.unitesummitteachers.wordpress.com for further updates. Thank you for joining us in these exciting efforts to improve our schools in the service of students and teachers!