A group of teachers and administrators had a long but good Friday last week as negotiators from Manhattan Beach Unified School District and the Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Association spent 14 hours before arriving at a tentative labor agreement late that night.
The teachers, who had been working without a contract, agreed to retroactive salary increases of 1 percent for the last school year and 1.5 percent this year and a 2.5 percent increase next year. The new contract, signed as a tentative agreement on April 19 at 10:30 p.m., also includes contingency language for a 1 percent increase in 2021, and for the first time adds class size provisions. Teachers in grades 4-12 who have more than 31 students, or secondary teachers with an average of more than 31 students, will receive a small stipend for the extra work required for larger class sizes.
Superintendent Mike Matthews said that the agreement will allow the district to more fully focus on its core mission.
“Having an agreement that goes for two more years means that we can all focus on meeting the needs of our students, which is the reason we are all here,” Matthews said. “I’m proud of an agreement that both provides salary increases and finds ways to address the challenges of class size.”
The agreement comes after a fraught year in which teachers came into conflict with the MBUSD administration over not just the lack of a new contract but mold and asbestos issues that impacted classrooms on several campuses. The timing of the agreement also comes two days after more than 100 teachers flooded the Board of Education meeting in protest of their contract situation. They had worked without a contract for almost two years.
MBUT president Shawn Chen said that the teachers’ show of unity seemed to have had an impact.
“What I really feel proud of is that our members learned over the last several years that this is what unionism is about — you have a right to speak your truth,” Chen said. “This is not industrial-era England. You have to make your condition known, and express yourself. And yes, you have to have a lot of guts to stand up there. That so many teachers did so speak to their frustration, and that definitely had impacts.”
A high profile teacher union conflict at the Los Angeles Unified School District that led to a strike in January also served as a backdrop. Chen said that a strike was indeed something MBUT teachers were willing to do, but that doing so would have entailed a long process, including mediation.
The teacher’s frustration level, however, was growing; since last May, MBUSD and the district engaged in ten daylong negotiation sessions to seemingly no avail.
“Honestly, who wants to go to a strike? That is not anybody’s idea of a good time,” she said. “We are just definitely happy it’s done. Back to our work.”
Adam Geczi, the chairperson of the five-person MBUT negotiating team, said that the teachers’ strong display at Wednesday’s meeting was less about strategy and more about passion.
“That was the least amount of organizing we’ve ever done for a Wednesday board meeting, and probably the most generous crowd I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And I’ve been doing this since 2007.”
Geczi thought the teachers’ message hit home with district leaders.
“I felt a sense in that room on Friday that an agreement was necessary, because typically we have dates and times scheduled [ahead]. There was no going over schedules this time,” he said. “It felt like when I made the push to get this done, ‘We are not leaving until this is done,’ I didn’t get much resistance at all. That led me to believe a settlement was probably imminent.”
The issue of class size is not likely to go away. Many of the teachers who spoke at the board meeting expressed frustration at how large class sizes both limits how well they can do their job and increases the hours it takes to do so. Stacy Cabrera, an English teacher at Mira Costa High School, said she keeps a spreadsheet in which she logs the hours she works at home. So far this year, Cabrera said, she’s worked 500 hours beyond her school hours. Chen, who is also an English teacher, said she has 170 students in her five class periods, meaning her ability to truly delve into their essays is limited.
“We would do more if we could,” Chen said. “It takes a lot. You learn to strategize over the years…but we are limited in how much of our skills we can exercise. We are human beings and there is only so much you can do.”
Teachers are contracted at the high school for 29 students per class and five classes per day. Geczi said the new stipend pays $400 per additional increment averaging over 31 students, meaning the most any teacher is likely to earn is about $1,200 per year.
“Nobody is going to get rich off of that,” he said. “We just wanted to create a disincentive to have large class sizes.”
