A tentative agreement between the Benicia Teachers’ Association (BTA) and the Benicia Unified School District offering salary increases is scheduled to be voted on at the school board’s Thursday meeting.
In November, the BTA declared that it was at an impasse with the district over contract negotiations for pay raises. Bargaining teams had met for six sessions and reached a tentative agreement during a mediation on Friday, March 3. The negotiations will be presented at Thursday’s meeting, and the board will vote to ratify the terms of the agreement.
The agreement is offering a 3.5 percent ongoing salary increase for the 2016-17 school year.
“The percentage increase shall apply equally to all steps and columns of the salary schedule, and shall be used as the basis to establish all other salaries, stipends, hourly rates and payments that are linked to the salary schedule,” the agreement read.
The increase will go into effect on April 1 exclusively for hourly rates, salaries, Ph.D and master’s degree stipends. Other stipend increases would go into effect on July 1.
The agreement also noted that teachers authorized to have extra teaching assignments would be paid $35.88 per hour for each additional hour of instruction provided. It also noted that the pay rates would increase proportionally to any negotiated wage increase.
Additionally, the agreement provided guidelines for when a teacher would need to teach during a preparation period, appointing teachers on special assignment, compensation for teachers with extended day activities, guidelines for class sizes and caseloads for special education teachers, units for salary advancement and more.
Deputy Superintendent Dr. Michael Gardner will be discussing the terms of the agreement, and the district is recommending that the board vote to ratify it following comments from the public.
In other business, the board will be voting to authorize Benicia High School’s resolution to move to the North Coast Section athletic league from its current Sac-Joaquin Section. A Local Control Accountability Plan update will be delivered by Dr. Leslie Beatson, assistant superintendent of educational services; and Jan Rogenski, the coordinator of educational services. Additionally, the board will be highlighting Benicia High’s new speech and debate class.
The board will meet at 7 p.m., Thursday, in the Benicia Unified School District Board Room at the district building on 350 East K Street. There will be an earlier closed session at 6 p.m.
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The solution is really quite simple.
The City Council passes a resolution making it illegal to be a child between the ages of 5 and 18 years old.
These “Youthful Offenders” (YO) would be incarcerated Monday through Friday from 8:30 am until 5 pm. At 5 pm they would be released to the custody of their parents. They would all get weekend furloughs.
This would allow the teachers in Benicia to move from the Benicia Teacher Association to the much more powerful California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA). CCPOA members earn a base pay of $72,400 before factoring in overtime. This does take into account that they work all year, but as I am in favor of year round school schedules, I mean year round Scholastic Incarceration, I’m cool with that. Youthful Offenders would be under Scholastic Incarceration for three month blocks, with a month long furlough between blocks.
I believe joining the CCPOA would also improve the teachers benefit package as well.
After completing the Youthful Offender program here in Benicia, the Scholastically Incarcerated should be well prepared for collage and move on to being Scholastically Indebted.