Mark Welch's Perspective . . . Read my ideas, then think for yourself!

Hayward Teachers Strike: School District Mismanagement

(April 3, 2007) I was just notified that the Hayward Education Association (the teacher’s union) has delivered its "48-hour notice" letter to the Hayward Unified School District, informing the district that if no settlement is reached, teachers will strike on Thursday, April 5. (The 48-hour notice is not legally required, but was promised by teachers as a courtesy to parents). Note that four of Hayward's schools are "year-round" schools which are not in session this week; all of Hayward's schools will be on "spring break" next week. The "real impact" of the strike (if not settled) won't be felt until April 16. I view this as a serious tactical mistake by the teachers' union, which is essentially giving the district two full weeks to prepare for the strike -- but I suspect the teachers' union wants to minimize the impact in the hopes that the district will come back to the negotiating table.

How did we get here?

Several years ago, HUSD had a $15 million budget deficit, and the district was forced to accept "oversight" from an Alameda County Board of Education administrator. Two superintendents later, the district has emerged from that oversight with a balanced budget and several new top-level administrators.

During those "hardship" years, Hayward teachers actually waived a negotiated raise (taking NO raise for two whole years) to help the district balance its budget, and then negotiated lower raises than neighboring districts to keep the district in balance. Last year, the union received only a 0.84% raise. In its 2005-2008 contract, the district and union agreed to re-negotiate about salaries for the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years, after state "cost of living" allocations were set by the state. But the contract doesn’t permit any other re-negotiations. (This makes the teachers look bad, since they can’t request any other changes, such as reducing class sizes, repairing classrooms, buying new textbooks, etc.)

Earlier this year, the district announced 16.84% pay raises for its top administrators (several of them new to the district), claiming that such large raises were necessary to discourage these "top-quality" administrators from accepting jobs in other districts.

The district then turned around and offered teachers only a 3% pay raise. I think you can understand why that might seem insulting to "top-quality" teachers, especially since the district had received more than 3% from the state for cost-of-living salary increases! The 3% offer was really just a "lowball offer" to start negotiations. I think the union was reasonable in countering with a demand for the same 16.84% raise that was granted to top administrators (as a negotiating tactic).

The district flatly refused to negotiate further, forcing a fact-finding/mediation process.

Leading up to the mediation, the district arranged for an updated financial report which "documented" an exceptionally large 15% "general reserve," plus several extraordinary special reserves for potential future expenses (some of them 10 years off). Using this "doom and gloom" budget forecast, the district asserted that even the 3% raise, if granted, would result in a deficit budget within 2 years. In other words, the district claimed that it couldn’t afford even the 3% it had offered.

The manipulation in that "interim budget report" was transparent to most observers, and even some school board members seemed to have trouble "keeping a straight face" during the presentation. But the mediator/fact-finder accepted all the district's claims, and recommended a lower raise than the district had offered — 2.5% for 2006-2007 — but then recommended an additional 2.5% in 2007-2008.

The district’s response was bizarre — it lowered its offer even further, to a 1.2% raise for 2006-2007 but then an additional 5.8% raise for 2007-2008.

If the district's "doom and gloom" interim budget report were true, then the "fact-finder's" recommendation would have triggered a budget deficit in 2008, and the district's current offer would bankrupt the district even sooner.

The district also "offered" an extra 1.6% raise in 2007-2008 — but only on the condition that at least 60 of the district’s most experienced teachers accept a meager ($10,000) early-retirement package. As a skeptic, I suspect that the district has already forecast that 60 teachers will not accept the offer, and in any event the district has demonstrated a mastery of manipulation of financial record-keeping, so this offer is likely only illusory. In any event, the qualification for this raise couldn’t be confirmed for at least a year (at which time it would need to be paid retroactively). Note that Hayward’s salary scale is skewed quite differently from most California districts, paying much less to teachers at the top of the salary scale than other districts — but moving teachers more quickly into those higher tiers in the middle of their careers.

The most recent union request was for an 8% raise for 2006-2007 and an additional 4% raise in 2007-2008.

Following that exchange, the district provoked matters further by responding to an individual teacher’s complaint with a terse, insulting email questioning her teaching skills, based on an administrator’s claim that he’d visited her classroom. Within hours, the administrator acknowledged that he’d never been in the teacher’s classroom nor had he ever met her. Instead, the insulting email simply reflected that top administrator's contempt for all Hayward teachers.

All of this comes in the context of rapidly-declining enrollment, which is not happening because there are fewer students in Hayward, but because HUSD has created a huge incentive for "parents of means" to send their children to other schools (some to private schools and charter schools, but mostly to neighboring school districts, which gladly accept transfers of affluent students with high test scores, who bring with them state ADA payments but use fewer resources than average). By "pushing out" affluent families and students, HUSD is creating a greater imbalance, since its remaining students are poorer and have less family support, requiring more education resources from shrinking funds.

I told the board on March 14 that it appeared to me that it was provoking a strike, and that it was sending a clear message to Hayward families that they should move their students out of the district. I begged the board to clarify that this wasn’t its intent, and they refused to respond. I repeated my request at the March 28 board meeting, and again the board refused to counter its clear message that HUSD wants Hayward students to attend school in other districts, and that they want Hayward’s experienced teachers to quit and go work elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the only viable solution to HUSD’s problems is aggressive intervention by parents, who could demand that the district stop running the schools for administrators or bean-counters, but instead for the students. But HUSD has already "pushed out" many of the parents who would normally have the resources (time and money) to intervene, and has alienated all the constituencies (students, parents, teachers, business owners, neighbors) who might have contributed to a solution.

At the Hayward school board meeting March 28, I actually broke out laughing when someone mentioned the "bond." The district does desparately need money to repair and upgrade school facilities to meet health and safety codes. But the Hayward Unified School District flushed any chance of getting a bond when it granted 16.84% raises to a handful of top administrators (some new to the district), and HUSD has cemented that by provoking a teacher strike. The odds were already stacked against approval of a bond, and now the district has destroyed any remaining hope for a bond.

-- Mark J. Welch

Last Updated on 04/04/2007
By Mark Welch
Email: MarkWelch@MarkWelch.com

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Mark Welch's Perspective . . . Read my ideas, then think for yourself!

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