Educator Rights and Wrongs

ICUE messaging has made it clear that their intent is not to lift up educators or provide a platform or a strong voice for being part of decision-making. They intend to continue the Faculty Senate model, which in our view is unable to achieve any of the real changes we need as educators. At ACE we believe in collaboration and cooperation, but when two parties don’t agree, there needs to be a level playing field for working out the solution. We want to protect and preserve what works, and make progress on the things that do not.

Let’s review the issues that ACE has already stood up for:

• ACE brought attention to the district’s historically uncompetitive salaries and called for increases. We’ve now seen the largest increases in living memory.
• ACE remembered that the district had taken away two of our paid days off during the Great Recession and never fulfilled their promise to give them back. We made it a priority and now we have two paid days called, “Teacher Off-Days.”
• ACE knew that educators needed more COVID sick leave during the pandemic and made that demand. We soon saw an extension of COVID leave.
• ACE called for an increase to Substitute pay to allow for better sub coverage – and it happened.
• ACE saw a drastic shortage of IAs to support students and teachers and repeatedly called on the district to improve hiring and retention of IAs. There’s still a shortage, but the gap is shrinking.
• ACE Psychologists and MHSPs bargained for the largest salary increases in the district, seats on the EBC and SBC, access to needed materials, a staffing ratio for School Psychologists, clarity in their job descriptions, their own evaluation forms, office space, safe work environments, etc. The list goes on. Most importantly, they won the right to negotiate all future changes to their working conditions and continue making improvements.
• ACE found out that the district was changing the policy about personal items in a way that violated our rights as educators. We had to file a charge against the district, but the results protected the rights of educators to display items of a cultural, religious, or personal interest in our personal spaces. 
• ACE was aware that the district admin made a unilateral change to the policies for supporting students of all genders and realized that it put employees in conflict with the law. The outcome was a common-ground solution that protects students and supports employees.
• ACE realized that the closed-door conversations and Non-Disclosure Agreements that our colleagues were required to sign in order to be part of the Employee Compensation Committee ECC (where they make decisions about our salaries!) were unlawful and we put a stop to it.
• ACE SPED teachers shared that they have been required to conduct the evaluations of IAs that work with them, which is inconsistent with the law. When ACE pushed back, Admin suddenly became responsible for conducting all evaluations.
• This doesn’t include all the site-specific and individual-specific issues that we have stood up for.

ACE took a position and did the work on those issues through repeated communications, speeches at the board, meetings with Admin, and well-researched information shared out widely. It has been very difficult because we don’t have the rights of a recognized union except with Psychologists and MHSPs.

Where was ICUE on any of these issues? What would FS/ICUE have done if ACE hadn’t been here?

One recent example was the decision to not provide raises to unrepresented staff this year. In the CUSD Employee Compensation Committee (ECC) meeting, it was a Faculty Senator who made the motion to ask for no raises for non-represented staff and an ICUE representative who seconded it. ACE voted against the motion because we’re aware that the district had sufficient resources to provide a meaningful increase. ICUE is either unwilling or unable to gather the information on their own and stand up for educators. In 2023-24, the district did not pass the full 8.22% COLA on to employees – we only saw 5%. That additional 3.22% could have been a raise this year. Instead, they put another $18 million into reserves. ACE School Psychologists and MHSPs are continuing to bargain over this year’s increases.

In the future, the district will have tough decisions to make regarding our compensation and we are deeply worried that Faculty Senate/ICUE would merely accept what district admin tells them and rubber stamp admin’s plans to put the burden back on our shoulders. We think you should be worried about it, too.

ICUE has partnered with an organization that we have previously raised the red flags about. Goyette, Ruano and Thompson, formerly known as Goyette and Associates, is a for-profit law firm in Sacramento with a worrisome track record. They have been in the public eye for controversy after controversy after controversy. We also received letters from fellow educators who have dealt with Goyette in the past.  One educator noted about Ruano “…either, he intentionally lied to our teachers and community members about what he, his law firm, and this “union” could provide, or he is incompetent and unaware of labor laws in education.”

Controversies aside, we also raised concerns that Goyette does not have the expertise or experience to adequately support educators in a level that matches ACE and CTA. CTA attorneys, and the network of specialized attorneys we have access to through our CTA legal services, are experts in the laws that are relevant to our work.

Most importantly, a law firm is not a union. Building and supporting a union takes a lot of work and a lot of people who believe in empowering us as professionals. We have partnered with CTA because it is a non-profit that is driven by the educator membership and has built a structure to support the independently operated chapters throughout the state in making their own, local decisions. Statewide, we are already part of the democratic decisions about how dues dollars are spent and what issues CTA prioritizes. At Goyette and Associates, educators have no say.`

We believe all educators should be in the union together, regardless of job title, politics, or views because we are all on the same side when it comes to supporting our students and having a say in our work. We know that in order for us to have an effective union, we need more people in the conversation. ICUE does not seem interested in that. We invited them to a public debate and they declined. We always remain open to conversations.

We have repeatedly objected to the misinformation that ICUE has shared about our intent, our character, our work, and our organization. We have also heard reports of ICUE representatives engaging in tactics of bullying, misinformation, and confusion when trying to collect signatures. In Clovis, we hold ourselves to a high standard of honesty and integrity, and we expect the same from our colleagues. We know that this is an important decision that impacts all of us, and we should not be pushed or tricked into signing without being fully informed and free of duress. We welcome questions and love having respectful debates, but Clovis educators deserve the truth.

We call on all Clovis Educators to do their own homework. One thing we agree on with ICUE that the time to make a decision is now. Faculty Senate is not gone, but we believe they will be soon and we are free to make the decision for ourselves how we will organize and be represented. Vote now!