Fresno teachers want millions in new student and staff investments. Can FUSD afford it?
Last month, the Fresno Teachers Association presented Fresno Unified district leaders with a set of proposed investments, many of which focused on student well-being outside of the classroom.
With board approval, the agreement would pledge historic funding levels toward wraparound services for students, particularly those experiencing homelessness.
FTA leadership said they did not secure the district’s official support for these investments and plan to revisit the proposals when labor negotiations begin later this year.
But multiple board members said some trustees have already signed a copy of the proposals, creating at least some disagreement within the school board.
It’s unclear how those signatures might affect upcoming labor talks. While still unofficial, the proposals offer a glimpse of FTA’s priorities in the next bargaining cycle.
“They consider this bargaining, right, when we consider this a plan on how to really tackle — proactively tackle — looming issues in this district,” said FTA president Manuel Bonilla, “whether that be recruitment and retention of all employees, or, as you can see, the laundry list of student issues. We feel, again, that they just don’t have a plan to address these things.”
Bonilla said he had hoped to receive the district’s support on the revised proposals ahead of the summer, as the student-related proposals would require careful planning if they want to implement them by the start of the next school year.
Not all of FTA’s multi-million dollar proposals have been reviewed or vetted by the district yet, and at least some trustees have questioned whether the ideas are financially realistic.
“What we are left with is (a) document signed by 4 trustees agreeing on a course of action without proper analysis of what it means for our schools, students, parents, staff and finances,” wrote board president Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas in a statement to The Bee’s Education Lab.
Another key question is whether the district has a responsibility to assist its students with the circumstances they face outside of the classroom – and how closely that’s connected to the school’s mission of educating and preparing students for life after high school.
What’s in the Fresno teacher’s union proposal?
The employee-related proposals include several items dealing with healthcare and teacher pay:
Disability insurance for all employees going forward, estimated at $7.2 million annually for an approximate 8,000 employees
100% district paid healthcare for all employees, estimated at $2.7 million annually
$5,000 one-time payments to employees over two years, estimated at $50 million
Some of the student-related proposals focus on academic interventions:
- Hiring at least one reading specialist at all elementary school sites, estimated at $12.2 million
- Providing mandatory, free tutoring for all students at secondary schools who have Cs, Ds and Fs, estimated at $2 million
- Capping class sizes at 18 at 10 elementary school sites with lowest performing students, estimated at $4 million
Others are aimed at supporting students outside of the classroom, including:
Providing annual funding for clothes and school supplies for students who need them, estimated at $1 million
Opening high school parking lots and providing security to homeless families to park their car, estimated at $500,000
Free laundry service for students by 2026, estimated at $1 million
An earlier version of the proposal totaled an estimated $55.1 million in investments related to students, with about $20 million of that labeled as one-time spending, according to copies reviewed by the Ed Lab.
Other costly proposals from the initial document included resetting lifetime health benefits for some teachers, which Trustee Terry Slatic said would bankrupt the district in four years.
A revised version of the proposals, a copy of which was provided to the Ed Lab, eliminated a proposal regarding raises for trustees, which violated board policy, and instead asked FUSD leaders to continue discussions over the summer with the FTA regarding lifetime benefits.
A $20 million proposal to have the district building housing for 100 homeless students by 2028 was walked back in the amended draft. However, teachers still plan to push the district to address student homelessness.
Some Fresno Unified trustees signed a draft of the union proposal
FUSD’s current teacher contract deal remains in effect through June next year. New contract negotiations are supposed to begin at the end of the summer or early fall.
“There is no bargaining or negotiating happening at this time,” district spokesperson Nikki Henry said in an email to the Ed Lab.
Bonilla said the catalyst for the new proposal was the association’s discovery that the district has been paying for roughly 2,000 of its employees’ disability insurance in a contract with CSEA while not applying that to the rest of its approximate 10,000 employees, including teachers.
He said that violates the district’s historical practice of parity for all employees. FTA has filed a grievance on the issue, the district confirmed. The association believes that the district would stand to pay between $16 to $22 million in three years’ worth of back-pay for the discrepancy, Bonilla said.
However, Bonilla said the FTA put together the new proposals as an alternative way to spend the money he says the district would likely owe instead of paying it out in cash to employees.
“We don’t like to just look backwards,” Bonilla said. “Why don’t we take that money that they potentially lose, and let’s just look forward with some of it?”
He also said that some issues like improving teacher pay and expanding benefits are more urgent with the looming teacher shortage the union has predicted. The district has disputed FTA’s assessment, stating that it doesn’t expect significant turnover.
Some trustees, however, question whether the timing of these proposals was opportunistic.
Slatic said this kind of back-and-forth with the union typically does not happen until the fall and that he believes the timing has to do with economists’ projections of an economic recession.
Jonasson Rosas said it’s unusual to be approaching contract proposals this early and something she hasn’t seen before in her time on the board.
“It is true that there is a lot of new funding coming available,” she said, “to address some of the issues that were brought about by the pandemic and to improve education overall. We’re welcoming these funds, but some of them are one-time funds. It is unknown how long or how many years we’re going to be able to count on them.”
Now with signatures from multiple trustees, Jonasson Rosas said she worries normal negotiation processes, including gathering student and parent input, as well as cost analysis, were “bypassed.”
Recently-elected Trustee Andy Levine told the Ed Lab that FTA approached him with the document before he was sworn in and that he signed it, thinking of it as a way of signaling his support to start the conversation around these topics. While he still supports the proposals, in theory, he said he has since followed up with the association, letting them know he doesn’t think it was appropriate for him to sign.
“It didn’t feel appropriate for me to formally agree to anything before being sworn in, before being in closed session, and before just really understanding more fully just sort of the process and protocol and how to make some of these things happen,” he said.
Trustee Veva Islas wrote in an email that she’s concerned other board members might have violated closed session rules by discussing the FTA proposals and trustee signatures in public. She also defended FTA’s right to start conversations around these topics.
“It’s absurd to think that FTA would want to financially ruin the district that employs their teachers,” Islas wrote. “Agreeing to discussion is not agreement to the blanket requests or a bypass of the contract negotiations process and final vote by the board.”
Jonasson Rosas, Slatic and Valerie Davis told the Ed Lab they did not sign the document. Islas and Keshia Thomas declined to answer the question. Trustee Claudia Cazares didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
What role do schools play in addressing student wellness?
Trustees were divided on the question of whether such proposals belong in teacher contract talks.
Thomas praised the proposed investments in students, calling them “colossal.”
“We really don’t have to have FTA to do that. That can be the work of the board behind closed doors,” she said. “I’m really quite proud that they’ve stepped out of the box in terms of thinking about the whole, holistic school district.”
Studies over the past decade have shown links between student wellness and academic performance.
Slatic said that while he also considers social-emotional investments important, he said the school district has urgent issues it’s ignoring with students’ reading and math abilities not being at grade-level.
“The retort, I’m certain, is going to be: Why don’t we do both?” he said. “Awesome. Let’s do both. But we haven’t been doing the reading, the writing, and the math since I got on the board, and not in the previous 10 years from that. Because that stuff’s easily quantifiable. ... Social-emotional stuff is fluffy.”
Islas, however, said she believes the two issues are inextricably linked. When a student is hungry or cold, they’re not in a position to learn, she said.
“Is it our responsibility alone? No. Homelessness is not just the burden of the school district,” she said. “We do need partnerships with the city and county in order to come up with innovative strategies.”
Bonilla takes a similar stance. “I’m sure that people once said, it’s not our job to provide lunch at schools,” he said. “This is part of that evolution.”
The financial feasibility of the investments, meanwhile, remains up for debate.
Slatic said that the district is still running the numbers on several of the proposals.
Jonasson Rosas said that while there’s no question that spending money on students is a good thing, locking specific interventions into a contract might not position the district for success.
“Realistically, we need to spend our limited resources in the way that’s going to help the kids are the best, and listening to our parents,” she said. “Those needs may change year by year.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
This story was originally published May 22, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
