Unite Summit

Support for Summit Sierra

Statement of support for our Sierra colleagues

As we prepare for bargaining, we know that our contract proposals will include guarantees around mandated working hours, which is crucial for teacher sustainability and retention. Our colleagues at Sierra are seeking similar guarantees through the compensation process, and they are concerned that they are being pressured to agree to the current compensation proposal without the inclusion of those guarantees. After multiple meetings with Diane, including one on Thursday afternoon, the Sierra staff was given 24 hours to generate a counter proposal. Diane indicated that she was likely to vote down such a proposal and said that if consensus could not be reached that the decision grid would be used to determine who has the final say.

Here is one teacher’s summary of the concerns from our Sierra colleagues:

This feels like the only opportunity to get clear expectations for mandated teacher time in writing. I want to define where the boundary of required time is and where compensation for extra time should begin.

We are united in that we want flexibility of how to use our time. We differ in how we want to spend our time. That is to be expected. We want a clear boundary and expectation addressing how much of our time is filled with mandated programming. We all seem to agree on that.

The argument seems to hinge on the debate of whether or not a boundary for mandated hours lives in a compensation policy or elsewhere. I believe that it does.

If it is decided that it does not, I need written confirmation that mandated building hours will be capped at 40 hours through scheduling. Mandated hours would be defined as the typical school day work hours plus mandatory meetings and professional development. Extra duties outside of those hours would be voluntary or given extra compensation.

We stand by our colleagues at Sierra who are seeking to follow the consensus process in good faith, and we hope their concerns will be addressed before our compensation proposal is finalized. We feel it is inappropriate for our CEO to commit to a consensus process and then to respond to disagreement by pressuring teachers to drop their concerns rather than seeking compromise.

Update on contract negotiations

Unite Summit sunshined its initial contract proposals at the special board meeting held in January. You can read our sunshine document here. This means we can begin bargaining immediately about our proposals.

Summit had initially argued that it could not start bargaining until after the regularly scheduled board meeting in March, but their most recent communication indicates that they are seeking to schedule a special board meeting in February to sunshine their own proposals (again, since we sunshined our proposals already, we can start bargaining immediately on those issues and don’t have to wait for Summit to sunshine their proposals). We expect to hear back by the end of the week regarding bargaining dates.

We’re grateful to our allies who have helped support our efforts to bring Summit to the bargaining table without delay. Assemblymember Berman is one such ally who reached out to Summit. You can read his message here.

Legal Developments

We filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) last year about Summit’s conduct during the process to recognize our union. As you may remember, Summit administration wanted to add almost 100 home office and other administrative positions into our union and did not provide us with basic information in a timely manner.

Our charge persuaded PERB to issue a complaint on January 9, 2020 alleging that Summit broke the law by trying to include non-teaching positions in our union and not providing us information. Summit now has 20 days to respond. The PERB attorney will also be setting up an informal settlement conference (basically a mediation) to try and resolve the matter before it goes to a judge for a hearing.

We are not surprised that PERB filed a complaint, just as they did in the case of our terminated colleagues. Unite Summit will continue to push back against any delays by Summit administration that slow our efforts to protect and improve our schools.

Summit Board meeting, compensation process, and more

Action Item
Help us vote on a T-shirt design! We’d love your input – here’s the survey link: http://tinyurl.com/USTshirtDesign

Update on the bargaining process
At the Special Board Meeting on Jan. 16, the Unite Summit bargaining team presented their sunshine documents, listing the proposals we would like to include in our first contract. You can find that document here.

During the meeting, the Board announced that Summit administration’s bargaining team will be Diane Tavenner, Kelly Garcia, and Jimmy Zuniga. The next step will be for our union bargaining team and administration’s bargaining team to sit down and begin negotiations. This involves trading proposals of what we want in our contract. The proposals will go back and forth until we’ve come to a “tentative agreement.” Then members of our union will be able to read and discuss the tentative agreement and vote on whether or not to accept it. The SPS Board will do the same. Only after teachers have had a vote will the tentative agreement become our union contract.

During this entire process, your democratically chosen bargaining team will be giving updates and gathering input and feedback. If you want to be more involved, either as a member of the bargaining team, or to help make sure all teachers are informed about bargaining, please let us know!

We requested again today at the board meeting that Summit start negotiations as soon as possible. Summit leadership has stated that they cannot begin negotiations until after March 31st. Summit’s stated reason is their desire for more input before the Board adopts its initial proposals during its March 19 Board meeting. Waiting for three and a half months between having our union certified and sitting down to the bargaining table is unreasonable and is not a demonstration of good faith bargaining. We hope that Summit administration will change course and not unreasonably delay negotiations.

How does bargaining relate to the compensation process?
Here’s a reminder of how the current compensation process relates to bargaining (see previous newsletter for more details).

Any changes to the “status quo” of working conditions must be negotiated with our union. The current status quo regarding compensation is not the current salary and benefits schedule; it is the process Summit has historically used to periodically revisit that compensation plan. Compensation is a mandatory subject of any collective bargaining agreement, so we can revisit the subject during contract negotiations. Therefore, we will participate in current consensus procedures, which is the status quo, but that does not close the door on future talks related to compensation as it is part of our holistic contract negotiations. As we prepare to finish the compensation consensus process, we urge teachers to participate and make their opinions known. And, if there are ideas that didn’t make it in the final compensation process proposal but you think should be in our union contract, please let us know!

As a reminder, bargaining a contract is a much more expansive process than the narrow set of topics that are included in the current compensation process. Pushing for improved student support services has always been one of our top priorities. We will continue to push Summit to make sure that our full list of priorities are addressed during bargaining.

What might a finished contract look like?
We want to send congratulations to charter teachers at Pacific Collegiate for settling their first contract! We think their example might help you envision what the overall goal is as we head into bargaining our own first contract.

Charter educators at Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz organized their union, United PCS, back in August of 2018 and this week, both the union and the school approved their first union contract!

Highlights of the contract include:

An end to at-will employment! After a probationary period, teachers can only be terminated for cause, and there is a clear and fair process for discipline with the opportunity to appeal to a neutral arbitrator.
A salary schedule that brings teachers closer to parity with surrounding schools, including significant raises for mid-career teachers and an immediate $3,000 bonus for all teachers
An average class size of 24 students, with no class having more than 28 students
A faculty board advisor, who will be elected by teachers and receive a stipend. The faculty board advisor will attend all of the charter school’s Board meetings, give input on Board decisions, and report teacher concerns to the Board.

You can check out the full contract on their website https://www.unitedpcs.org/

Rainier Community Needs Unaddressed
During the SPS Board meeting, the Board voted to officially close Rainier. When asked if there was any need for discussion before the vote, one of the Board members said “we’ve had a lot of discussion about it.” No discussion about the Rainier closure took place during open session at a board meeting — as far as we’re aware, the Rainier closure conversation happened behind closed doors, which may be a violation of the law.

One of the Rainier parents commented on how the closure has not been transparent. She gave the example that Evergreen Elementary School District is consolidating schools, which has involved a months-long process of public meetings and stakeholder involvement. None of that happened with Rainier. A Rainier student expressed dismay that so little notice was given for this Board meeting and asked why students weren’t getting the support for transitioning to a new school that they were promised. And multiple members of the Rainier community brought up a concern that we’ve been raising since the closure was announced; Rainier families want transportation to Tahoma. Other charters in East Side provide transportation for their students; providing transportation would not be cost-prohibitive and it would allow Rainier students (most crucially, current juniors) to be able to stay with Summit. We will continue to advocate for the needs of the Rainier community during this difficult time.

First step in negotiations process can begin

Time for Sunshine!

Now that we are certified as the union, we can begin negotiations! The first step in negotiations is for our union and Summit administration to present the topics that we want to negotiate over and our initial positions on those topics at a public Board meeting.

This process, called “sunshining” will happen at a special SPS Board meeting next week, on Thursday, January 16th from 8:00 AM -10:00 AM. We will be presenting this “sunshine” document.

Our bargaining team created our sunshine document based on the input we’ve received over the past year through surveys, one-on-one conversations, and meetings about what teachers want to include in our contract. We have a democratically-elected bargaining team that will be sharing what has happened at each bargaining session and will continue to gather input throughout the bargaining process.

In continuing its efforts to delay going to the bargaining table, Summit administration has stated that they cannot begin negotiations until after March 31st. Summit’s stated reason is their desire for more input before the Board adopts its initial proposals during its March 19 Board meeting. However, the law allows us to begin negotiations right after the January meeting. Waiting for three and a half months between having our union certified and sitting down to the bargaining table is unreasonable and is not a demonstration of good faith bargaining. We hope that Summit administration will change course and not unreasonably delay negotiations.

Board Meeting Inaccessibility

We continue to be concerned about the inaccessibility of Summit Board meetings. As we detailed last month, only six members of the public were allowed into the Board meeting. The rest of the parents, students, and teachers who took time off of work and school to drive to Redwood City were denied entry to the Board room at the Home Office and had to participate via videoconference at Prep.

This caught the attention of Senator Connie Leyva, who recently authored a law to make charter school board meetings more accessible and open to the public. She sent a letter of concern to Summit’s Board and administration, which you can read here.

Welcome back – and let us know if you need anything!

We hope you had a restful and restorative break! Please reach out to your site rep or contact us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com if you have any questions or concerns.

Rainier and Bargaining update

Update on bargaining meeting regarding Rainier On Monday 12/16, teachers from the Rainier and Tahoma communities met with Diane Tavenner at Home Office in Redwood City as official union representatives to bargain over the impact of closing Rainier. From Rainier, Isela Mosqueira, Shaila Ramachandran, and Sunli Kim were present. From Tahoma, Andrea Hernandez was present. Ona Keller, our union organizer with the CTA was also present.

Here is the list of proposals that we brought to the table to bargain. From the beginning of the meeting, Diane said she would not bargain over any of our core community demands, including transportation for Rainier students. She told us that the “bargaining table is not the place to talk about what’s best for students.” We believe the bargaining table is exactly where we should be talking about what’s best for students, which is why Rainier’s community demands were a part of our proposal. Diane made clear that she would only bargain over subjects that she is legally mandated to bargain over and so would only respond to our proposal on transfer, layoff, and reemployment rights for Rainier teachers. Diane informed us she would discuss our proposal with her lawyer and schedule a follow up bargaining meeting by the end of this week.

Another of our community demands was for Summit to take the steps necessary to make sure there is space for all Rainier students at Tahoma (Tahoma’s charter states that full enrollment for the school is 405 students). Diane informed us that all Rainier students will have a spot at Tahoma who want it and that there is no enrollment cap. We have now been able to independently confirm with both East Side and Santa Clara County that there is no enrollment cap and that there will be space for any Rainier student who wishes to attend Tahoma next year.

Unite Summit is awaiting Diane’s follow up email to schedule a second bargaining meeting over these issues. The Rainier and Tahoma communities are very eager to resolve these issues ASAP as they affect the immediate futures of our students and staff.

Board meeting updates
Parents, students, and teachers attended the Santa Clara County Board of Education meeting on Dec. 11, the Summit Board meeting on Dec. 12, and the East Side Union High School board meeting on Dec. 12. Student journalists present at the Summit Board meeting and the East Side board meeting wrote this article to capture the community’s concerns. We are continuing to follow up with board members from Santa Clara County and East Side to ensure that they are fully informed and to advocate that they take action to help meet the needs of the Rainier and Tahoma communities. We also remain concerned at the inaccessibility of the Summit Board of Directors meetings and will continue to push for scheduling that would allow easier access for parents, students, and teachers who want to attend future meetings.

Rainier parents, students, teachers, and supporters at the SPS Board meeting (in the video conference room at Summit Prep; only six members of the public were let into the Board meeting at Summit’s Home Office next door.

Moving forward into next year
Now that we have been certified by PERB, we can begin negotiating our contract. We have sent Summit a request to schedule bargaining dates with their team. Our Bargaining Team will be meeting in January to continue preparing for bargaining our first contract. Our top goals remain to improve support services for students, increase teacher retention through improved job sustainability, and provide teacher voice in the decision-making processes. We hope that SPS will work with us to ensure that we reach a contract that fully meets the needs of our students and our teachers.

Wishing you a restive winter break!
We are so thankful for the amazing amount of work all our teachers have put in this semester. Thank you for loving our students so well. We wish you lots of rest, restoration, and self-care over the break, and we look forward to seeing you back in the New Year!

We’ve been certified!

We have two pieces of exciting news to share today:

The California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) has certified Unite Summit as the union for all Summit teachers in California! This means we can begin negotiating our contract.
PERB has issued a complaint alleging that Summit broke the law by firing three teachers in June

Certification
Since April, Summit has been trying to delay recognition of our union–Unite Summit/CTA/NEA– by arguing that Home Office staff and deans should be included in our bargaining unit (the “bargaining unit” is the positions represented by our union). We formed a union of teachers; Summit’s rationale for including positions other than teachers has never really made sense to us.

On Monday, we learned that a Senior Regional Attorney from PERB certified that our bargaining unit consists of only teachers and does not include Home Office staff or deans. We are not surprised that PERB made this determination; it is the case we’ve been making since Summit initially denied recognition of our union back in April.

This decision is very clear (you can read the decision for yourself here or see our summary below). The PERB attorney rejected every argument that Summit made about why they thought our bargaining unit should include non-teaching staff. And the PERB attorney validated our right to create a union of only teachers at Summit. We are now certified as the union and after months of legal delays, we can begin bargaining our contract.

While Summit could try to further defy teachers’ decision to unionize by appealing this certification to the full Public Employment Relations Board, the PERB attorney’s 16 page determination is clear. Summit’s arguments are baseless and an appeal would be futile. Appealing to the PERB Board would not be a decision based on any legitimate legal arguments.. Importantly, we will continue to be certified as the union during the appeals process, which means we can begin negotiations even if Summit decides to appeal. We will be asking Summit for negotiating dates in January so that we can sit down to the bargaining table without further delay and work together to improve our schools and better support our students.

Our students and teachers — especially the Rainier community — shouldn’t have to face any further legal delays. We are eager to begin negotiations with Summit to address our core issues: improving student support services; decreasing teacher turnover and making our jobs more sustainable; and giving teachers a greater voice in decision-making. As we are seeing with the closure of Rainier and the chaos created by this decision, it is essential that teachers actually have an equal voice and can bargain over the issues that impact our students.

We urge Summit to respect PERB’s determination and begin negotiations in good faith without further delay.

Complaint

On the last day of the 2018-19 school year, Summit fired three teachers who had been given contracts for the 2019-20 school year. These teachers were active in building Unite Summit, and we filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with PERB, alleging that their firing was in retaliation for union activity and therefore broke the law.

Our charge persuaded PERB to issue a complaint alleging that Summit broke the law. Summit now has 20 days to respond. The PERB attorney will also be setting up an informal settlement conference (basically a mediation) to try and resolve the matter before it goes to a judge for a hearing.

We are not surprised that PERB filed a complaint; we’ve always believed our case was strong. Unite Summit will continue to vigorously support our colleagues, and we call on Summit to respect Summit teachers’ legal rights to unionize, to own their responsibility to refrain from intimidation, harassment, threats or retaliation, and to immediately reinstate the three fired teachers.

If you have questions about our union’s exciting legal victories, or want to know more about why Summit administration is using legal delays to try to delay our efforts to improve our schools, please email us at UniteSummitTeachers@gmail.com If you want to read the legal documents, you can find them here (certification and complaint). Also, below please find a summary of the legal decision by PERB.

Summary of PERB’s Decision to Certify Our Union

In the administrative determination, as summarized below, the PERB senior regional attorney lays out why Summit’s arguments to include Home Office staff and deans are wrong.

Unite Summit has always sought to represent teachers. The determination affirms that we have the right to create a union of teachers and that Summit cannot force non-teaching staff into our union.
Most of the Home Office positions that Summit argued needed to be included in our union no longer exist or are vacant, due to the transition to TLP. In other words, Summit spent months arguing that PERB needed to include 70+ positions in our union that no longer exist. The PERB attorney found that the filled Home Office positions (6 people) don’t belong in our union and that it didn’t make sense to make a determination on the vacant positions or positions that no longer exist.
Summit argued that having only teachers in the union would prevent teachers and Home Office staff from working together. The PERB attorney noted that there is “no evidence that recognition of a teacher’s unit would stop teacher collaboration with other Summit employees” and that “Summit has not provided concrete evidence that recognition of a unit of classroom teachers would unduly impair Summit’s operations.” We agree.
The PERB attorney found that non-teaching staff don’t share an inseparable “community of interest” with teachers: they don’t spend the majority of their time teaching and their job duties, salary schedules, and work year are different from teachers. Therefore these positions do not need to be included in our bargaining unit. The determination states “the evidence sufficiently shows that the classroom teachers at Summit have a community of interest with each other. Further, the evidence sufficiently shows that Summit’s other certificated classifications (including the Home Office Classifications and deans) are not so similar in duties and interests such that they must be included in the same unit as classroom teachers.”

Support for Rainier

In this newsletter, you will find:
Context for the decision to close Rainier
Support requested for the Rainier community
Schedule of upcoming board meetings

Context for the decision to close Rainier

If you want more information about the decision to close Summit Rainier, here are a few sources of additional context:
Mercury News coverage
San Jose Spotlight coverage
Summit News (student-led journalism – this piece features video footage of the school assembly at which SPS leadership announced the upcoming closure, as well as links to additional articles)

Support requested for Rainier community

We are continuing to advocate for the needs of the Rainier students, teachers, and other community members who have been affected by Summit’s decision to close their school. Specifically, we are advocating for the following:

Current students of Rainier should be guaranteed a place at Summit Tahoma with best efforts put forth to maintain mentor groups. This would require changing the enrollment cap at Tahoma.
Transportation should be provided for students for the remaining three years of their time at Summit.
Guaranteed right to employment at Summit for next year for all Rainier teachers and staff, or right to refusal for open positions at Tahoma.
All Tahoma and Rainier staff, including operations, teachers, and school leaders, should be included in the development of the “consolidation process” and plan in order to have input on the future of these students.
All remaining money in Rainier’s budget should be allocated to Tahoma and used to respond to the needs listed above.

Survey data to support the Rainier demands:

Rainier teachers put together surveys for parents and students in order to best support them with their transition plans. Below are the results of overall data:

Student Survey Data

Parent Survey Data

Of 9-11th grade students who responded (209):46.7% would consider Tahoma a first choice in terms of schools to transfer to.
The survey also asked if Tahoma would be a first transfer choice if certain conditions were met:
62.9% would transfer if their mentor group was kept together
66% would transfer if their mentor/Rainier staff was a mentor next year
64.5% would transfer if a teacher from Rainier is on campus
72.1% would transfer if transportation was provided

Of parents of 9-11th grade students who responded (68)58.8% would consider Tahoma a first choice in terms of schools to transfer to.
The survey also asked if Tahoma would be a first transfer choice for their family if certain conditions were met:
66.2% would transfer if their mentor group was kept together
72.1% would transfer if their mentor/Rainier staff was a mentor next year
76.5% would transfer if a teacher from Rainier is on campus
82.4% would transfer if transportation was provided

Currently, Anson Jackson has stated that transportation will not be provided for Rainier students. Current funds in Rainier’s reserve will be allocated towards building out Tahoma’s campus. Summit has not petitioned with Santa Clara County to increase the enrollment cap of 405 at Tahoma.

Unite Summit reached out to our CEO to request to bargain over the closure of Rainier. In response to a request to bargain over these issues, our CEO sent the following:

Dear Unite Summit,
Summit has received Unite Summit’s request to “bargain over the impact of Rainier’s closure”. Please be advised that the Summit Public Schools Board has not yet taken an official action in accordance with the California Code of Regulations to close Rainier. Given that your request concerns a proposed decision, I understand there is no duty to bargain at this time. Additionally, I must point out that the decision of whether to close a school site is within Summit’s sole discretion.
Thank you,
Diane

Our response is listed below; we are still awaiting a reply:

Even if Summit’s publicly announced decision to close Rainier could truly be called a mere proposal, it is not relevant to Summit’s obligation to bargain over the effects of the closure. An employer must provide the exclusive representative with notice and an opportunity to bargain any reasonably foreseeable effects of a non-negotiable decision before implementing that decision. Cal. State Univ. (2012) PERB Dec. No. 2287-H.
Please let us know no later than December 11, 2019 when Summit is available to meet for negotiations.

Summit leadership has clearly already made the decision to close Rainier; the closure has been announced publicly and authorizers have been notified. While it is true that the Summit Board hasn’t taken official action to close Rainier (which is a violation of both Rainier’s charter petition and California’s open meetings laws), to say that this is merely a proposed decision is disingenuous. The Rainier community deserves the opportunity to negotiate the smoothest transition possible.

Schedule of upcoming board meetings

Below is information about when the relevant authorizers are meeting, as many elements of this decision have not yet been finalized and require further votes. Please contact your site union reps if you’d like to join us at these meetings.

*The SPS Board of Directors are scheduled to have their next public meeting on Dec. 12 from 1p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Home Office in Redwood City.

*The East Side Union High School District is scheduled to have their board meeting on Dec. 12 at 4 p.m (there is also public comment at 6:30pm) at the district office (830 N. Capitol Avenue San Jose, CA 95133). ESUHSD controls the facilities use agreement between the district, Rainier, Tahoma, and KIPP.

*The Santa Clara County Office of Education is having their next board meeting on Dec. 11 at 5 p.m. (there is also public comment at 7pm) at their offices (1290 Ridder Park Dr., San Jose). SCCOE controls the charter authorization for Tahoma, which includes Tahoma’s enrollment cap.

Rainier Closure Information and FAQ

On November 14, teachers, school leaders and families were informed that Summit plans to close Rainier, one of its high schools in San Jose, at the end of this school year.

We are devastated by the lack of transparency about this decision and the lack of empathy in terms of the emotional impact this has had on teachers, students and families. Rainier staff and faculty were not made aware of this decision until the night of November 13. As a result, we were not able to adequately support students who were emotionally impacted by this announcement. In addition, due to the short notice, many families felt blindsided and were unable to attend the Q&A session the following day to advocate for their children

This decision to close Rainier should have been communicated and worked on by families, staff, teachers and students. Teachers and administration should have been included in creating the most supportive environment in informing the community of the closing of Rainier.

This is an absolute failure of Summit’s organizational leadership to adequately serve our communities.

Unite Summit is working on a plan to guarantee the students, families, teachers and staff of Rainier are supported through this difficult time. We want a school for every child, a job for every teacher and adequate supports to help families through this transition. We also want teachers to be a powerful voice in creating a plan to help these schools and students. We expect that there will be open and honest reflection on how this happened to our community and how can we prevent this happening in the future. We continue to push for Summit to recognize the union as a way to prevent situations like this from repeating in the future. As a union, we have worked hard to create positive relationships with our authorizers. Had Summit felt pressure from the ESUHSD board, as they mentioned to Rainier staff, they could have worked with Unite Summit and the Rainier community to protect our school’s future. It is a failure of home office leadership that led to this outcome. Nobody else — not the District, not our union, and not our students and their families — caused Rainier to close.

As we create a plan of action to best meet the needs of the community, please expect more information next week about how you can support the Rainier community. If you have feedback, ideas or suggested supports, please contact Unite Summit at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com. If you are seeking more details about how the decision to close Rainier was made and how that decision will impact students, families, and teachers, please read the below FAQ.

We stand with Rainier.

What is happening to Rainier as a school site?

Rainier is scheduled to close at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. There has been some misleading messaging around this decision that has caused some to conclude that this is a planned merger between Rainier and Tahoma. That is not the case. According to Summit’s own FAQ, Summit is forcing Rainier to relinquish its charter, and Rainier closing at the end of this school year.

Who made this decision?

Summit Home Office. It is our understanding that in the spring of 2019, Summit and KIPP presented East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD) with the idea to put Summit on the Oak Grove campus and KIPP on the Mt. Pleasant campus. ESUHSD did not create this plan. Based on Unite Summit’s communications with district board members, we have no reason to believe that East Side would not have renewed Rainier’s charter in 2021. Site administrators and teachers from Rainier and Tahoma were not consulted at any point in the planning process behind this proposal.

When was the community notified of this decision?

SPS site administrators, including those at Rainier and Tahoma, were told of this decision on the evening of Thursday, Nov. 14. Site administrators immediately notified Rainier staff that evening. At 9:00PM Thursday night, Superintendent Anson Jackson emailed Rainier parents and Summit faculty (minus the Expeditions team, which did not receive an email notification until Friday morning). Rainier students were notified at an All-School Meeting on Friday morning.

Was there any warning or advance notice given to Rainier community members?
Rainier teachers learned from their admin in October that Diane was threatening to close their school in part due to the “mindset problem” of teachers. Diane provided no further data, context, or benchmarks for a potential closure and did not disclose that Summit had been negotiating with KIPP and East Side about facilities for months. On November 6, almost the entire Rainier faculty sent Diane a letter asking if she was planning on closing Rainier. She never replied.

Is there a transition plan?

No. Many unanswered questions remain due to the fact that SPS leadership did not present a transition plan for Rainier community members as part of their announcement into the upcoming school closure. We will be working hard over the next weeks to develop a transition plan and to hold SPS accountable to doing the least harm to our students in a very difficult situation.

What is happening to Rainier students?

Summit’s FAQ document says “Tahoma welcomes Rainier students” – however, Tahoma’s current charter includes an enrollment cap of 405, and there has been no indication that Summit submitted plans to change this enrollment cap to accommodate Rainier students. We will be pushing for an official guarantee that we can actually provide space at Tahoma for all Rainier students who want to transfer. We will also be pushing for Summit to provide transportation for Rainier students who would need transportation assistance in order to change schools.

What is happening to Rainier teachers?

According to SPS, “All Rainier employees have the opportunity to apply to transfer to another Summit school.” They have not been offered the guarantee of a job at Tahoma or at any other Summit campus. Effectively, this is a layoff where teachers are being asked to reapply for a job with the organization with no guarantee that a position will be available.

What can I do to support the Rainier community?

Over the next week, Unite Summit representatives at each school will be letting faculty know how they can support Rainier.

Compensation Process

Clarification on the compensation consensus process

Unite Summit would like to offer a few points of clarification on the information presented during our first compensation LT. The letter referenced in the slides was sent to Unite Summit at 3:26 p.m. yesterday; as teachers were still on duty, no one had a chance to read or respond to it before the meeting. Here is some additional context:

1. There appears to be confusion about the definition of “status quo.” During the unionization process, working conditions are supposed to remain at the status quo until a negotiated contract is ratified. Any changes to working conditions must be negotiated with our union. The current status quo regarding compensation is not the current salary and benefits schedule; it is the process Summit has historically used to periodically revisit that compensation plan. Compensation is a mandatory subject of any collective bargaining agreement, so we can revisit the subject during contract negotiations. Therefore, we will participate in current consensus procedures, which is the status quo, but that does not close the door on future talks related to compensation as it is part of our holistic contract negotiations. When recognized, we can continue to engage in transparent processes, such as gathering input from various sites and teams with regards to compensation and other issues. Having an elected bargaining team to negotiate will then also help us articulate and draft proposals for these decisions rather than putting it on the onus of individual teachers.

2. Majority support for Unite Summit has already been certified by the Public Employee Relations Board. The only reason we are still waiting on a ruling from PERB is that SPS has continued to put forth legal delays that seek to redefine the definition of our bargaining unit. Teachers have a legal right to define their own bargaining unit, and our union is seeking to represent our teachers. The continued arguments over the inclusion of Home Office and administrative employee positions, nearly all of which have been transferred outside of SPS and are now under TLP, are simply delays on the part of SPS leadership. (For more information on this issue, see our previous newsletter. We call on SPS to immediately recognize Unite Summit and move on to bargaining our first contract.

3. Unite Summit’s primary goals have always been:
a) improve support services for students;
b) improve job sustainability to increase teacher retention;
c) provide an increased voice for teachers in the decision-making processes that impact our lives and our students’ lives.
The current compensation consensus process addresses a narrow range of issues compared to the total number of issues that matter to our teachers and that we want included in our first contract. Like our union colleagues across the nation, we are concerned about much more than just pay and benefits. We want our schools adequately staffed with support services for students. We want a say in defining our job duties, working hours, and other important factors that are currently leading to teacher burnout and high turnover. We want elected teacher representatives at the bargaining table, negotiating with SPS leadership as equals on a holistic contract that addresses the scope of our concerns and provides a path forward in which teachers have a more equal say in ALL the decision-making processes that affect our lives and our students’ lives.

4. As previously stated, SPS sent an email to Unite Summit regarding the compensation process at 3:26 p.m. on the day of the first compensation LT. We have been asking for information about how the unionization process would affect the compensation consensus process since the subject was first raised during PD at the start of August. Receiving Summit’s stance on the issue less than five minutes before the first compensation LT did not provide anyone with enough information to fully answer everyone’s questions yesterday. There is a Bargaining Team meeting scheduled for this Saturday. Please reach out to your site representatives with questions, as they will be discussing the compensation consensus process, along with all other contract-related issues, as they prepare to move into bargaining.

Here are the current elected members of our Bargaining Team:
Denali HS: Liz Grewal, Science
Denali MS: Amber Steele, Electives
Everest: Evan Anderson, Science
Expeditions: Liz DeOrnellas, Journalism and Creative Writing
K2 HS: Brendan Boland, English
K2 MS: Haley Ralph (Holt), History
Prep: Dan McClure, Science
Rainier: Isela Mosqueira, Spanish
Shasta: Hillary Odom, Diverse Learner Support Summit Tahoma: Doug Wills, Math
Tam: Fahima Zaman, Science (interim)

Our fall survey is still open if you have not had a chance to give input: tinyurl.com/USFallSurvey. We are also still recruiting members of the Contract Action Team at each site, so please reach out to your Bargaining Team representative if you would like to be more involved in gathering teacher input and crafting contract proposals.

Being a teacher at Summit comes with unique responsibilities and stresses. Unite Summit was formed by teachers, for teachers. The intent has and continues to be to give teachers collective power and elevate their status in our decision-making processes. Regardless of our individual differences of opinion, it is important that we all have our thoughts accounted and voiced for. Our union is made stronger through collaboration and communication; please reach out to us and help us best represent you!

Resolutions of support

We are grateful to Summit Learning teachers from across the country for their public support of our unionization efforts. Here are some resolutions of support from Fresno, Oakland, Santa Barbara, and Beverly, Massachusetts.

New credentialing requirements

The recently passed charter bill (AB 1505) makes changes to credentialing requirements for charter teachers. There are a lot of questions about the changes, so here’s a brief primer.

Under the previous law, charter teachers did not need credentials if they did not teach “noncore, non-college-preparatory” classes. However, there was no standard definition of what “noncore, non-college-preparatory” means, which created confusion and inconsistencies.

AB 1505 now requires all charter teachers to have the same credentials as district teachers (charters also get the same flexibility that districts have in terms of emergency credentials and other exceptions to the law).

However, there is a phase-in period. Here’s the timeline:

Starting July 1, 2020, all charter school teachers must have a certificate of clearance. This means that your fingerprints, name, and other information is submitted to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) and put in their statewide database. Most Summit teachers already have a certificate of clearance. This is a student safety issue and allows the State to keep track of anyone who teaches in a California school.

Starting July 1, 2020, all newly hired charter school teachers must have an appropriate credential. This does not impact anyone currently working at Summit.

Starting July 1, 2025, all charter school teachers must have an appropriate credential. This means that current Summit teachers have to obtain a credential during the next 5+ years.

Additionally, by June of 2022, the CTC will conduct a study to determine if new credentials or permits need to be created in order to meet the needs of all schools (both district and charter), especially for “noncore, non-college-preparatory” classes.

SPS Board Meeting Recap, Bargaining Team Updates

Closing Push for our Fall Survey
Our response window has been extended to Oct. 22!

The Unite Summit Bargaining Team will meet at the end of the month. If you have not yet done so, please fill out our fall survey at: tinyurl.com/USFallSurvey. We have extended the response window to Oct. 22 to give us a chance to gather as much input as possible before our meeting.
Your responses will inform our work as we move into bargaining our first contract, so please take a few minutes to give us your thoughts.

Welcoming a New Member of the Bargaining Team

We are excited to announce that veteran math teacher Doug Wills is joining our Bargaining Team as the elected representative from Tahoma!

Here are the current elected members of our Bargaining Team:
Denali HS: Liz Grewal, Science
Denali MS: Amber Steele, Electives (Drama)
Everest: Evan Anderson, Science
Expeditions: Liz DeOrnellas, Journalism and Creative Writing
K2 HS: Brendan Boland, English
K2 MS: Haley Ralph (Holt), History
Rainier: Isela Mosqueira, Spanish
Summit Prep: Dan McClure, Science
Tahoma: Doug Wills, Math

News from the Summit Board Meeting
The Summit Public Schools Board of Directors met on Oct. 10 from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. You can find the agenda and the materials packet here; official minutes are not yet posted.
A few points of interest from the meeting:

Our CEO and Superintendent are focused on improving both attendance and enrollment at our campuses. They singled out K2 and Denali as campuses where they’d like to help lead on student recruitment.

As part of the Superintendent’s push toward our organization’s excellence goals, SPS has set a few goals that are more aggressive than the benchmarks that TLP has set for other Summit Learning campuses. Two examples:

SPS aims to have 60 percent of students setting goals in every content area every week.
SPS aims to have 100 percent of students receive checkpoint feedback within 48 hours. TLP sets its benchmark for timely feedback at two weeks. SPS teachers are already at 100 percent on this goal under the two-week benchmark. When questioned by board members regarding the amount of teacher time it takes to give feedback and the utility of optimizing the percent of students who receive feedback within 48 hours vs. setting aside time for longer check-ins with specific students, our superintendent argued that the 48-hour benchmark is necessary to prevent students from falling behind.

The meeting closed with a review of the Marshall Street Initiative, Summit’s focus on extending the work of SPS into the larger education community. The initiative currently includes the following programs:

Teacher Residency, led by Pam Lamcke
School Leader Certification, led by Greg Ponikvar
Prepared Parents, led by Mira Browne
Networked Continuous Improvement, led by Kyle Moyer
Postsecondary Pathways, led by Amy Sandoz

The end of the meeting packet (starting on pg. 48) provides Adam Carter’s presentation on the current state of those initiatives.

While we believe these wider initiatives have the potential to have an impact, Unite Summit aims to refocus attention, energy, and resources on the day-to-day needs of our students and our campuses. As mentioned at the start of this newsletter, our Bargaining Team is working to gather teacher input on your highest priorities, so please give us your perspective at tinyurl.com/USFallSurvey if you have not yet!

If you’d like more context on the meeting notes listed above, which were provided by the Unite Summit representative who was able to attend the board meeting, please contact us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com. Official minutes, when finalized, will be posted by the board on their website.

We believe that is important that all stakeholders have a chance to fully participate in the governance of our school organization, and we also know that many teachers, parents, and students who wanted to attend the Board Meeting were unable to attend because the meeting time conflicted with both school and work hours.

We hope Summit Public Schools and its board will consider that such scheduling, and the fact that board meetings happen only four times a year, makes it difficult for all voices to be heard and for all stakeholders to feel they are a valued part of the decision-making process at our organization.

October 10 Newsletter

Reminder — Please fill out our Fall Survey!
You can find our Fall Survey at: tinyurl.com/USFallSurvey Your responses will inform our work as we move into bargaining our first contract, so please take a few minutes to give us your perspective.

Unfair Labor Practice Charge

We filed for union recognition with the Public Employment Relations Board at the end of January; PERB certified that Unite Summit had support from the majority of teachers at Summit.

Summit denied recognition of our union in April and has been arguing since then that deans and certain Home Office employees must be included in our union. The legal delays in that process have been frustrating, and we want to make sure our teachers fully understand why that process has taken so long.

In the interest of transparency, we would like to share the Unfair Labor Practice charge we have filed against Summit Public Schools. We feel as if SPS has not acted in good faith as we work to resolve the definition of our bargaining unit. Unite Summit has always sought to represent Summit teachers, as we feel teachers hold a unique place in our organization and deserve to have their voices better heard.

We feel the legal delays that have resulted from misleading arguments related to the definition of a teacher are unproductive; we hope our organization will acknowledge that such actions are not appropriate and should not continue as we move into bargaining. We urge Summit to respect teachers and recognize our union so we can sit down at the bargaining table and work on important issues like teacher turnover and providing better support services for our students.

In our last newsletter, we provided more details about the current status of our recognition case. We are now waiting for an attorney from the Public Employment Relations Board to issue a decision as to which employees should be included in our union. In the meantime, we are working hard to prepare for bargaining, and we appreciate your support in providing survey responses and working with the organizers at your site!

Reach out to your site organizers, or contact us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com, if you have questions! Your site organizers are working to advocate for site-specific needs, so please reach out to them if you have issues you want to organize around to better meet the needs of your team!