Extra Credit

Teacher's union disputes school district over incentive plan

The union representing public teachers and education employees in Santa Fe is at odds with the school district over its attempt to win incentives for employees from the state.

On Wednesday, Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd wrote a letter to the local branch of the National Education Association outlining his intentions to submit an application to an incentive program sponsored by the state Public Education Department.

"In this economic climate, we ultimately felt that it would be best not to abandon a chance to develop a program that provides our undercompensated teachers with an opportunity to significantly increase their income this year through this voluntary program," Boyd wrote.

NEA-SF President Grace Meyer shot back a letter noting that the union "completely disagrees" with his decision and alleged that the district could be violating the collective bargaining agreement between the schools and the union. She warned the district not to share an opt-in form for the incentives with the union-represented employees.

"It is clear that we don't yet have an agreement between NEA-SF and SFPS regarding Santa Fe's proposal," Meyer wrote. "As a result, for the school to communicate directly with our bargaining unit members is not only inappropriate, but violates state statute and we will be forced to take action."

Earlier this year, PED announced that it was providing up to $7.2 million to school districts in incentives for their employees. All the local districts had to do was submit applications with incentive standards for the PED to either accept or reject.

The Santa Fe school district and the teacher's union came up with a proposal that included existing teacher observations, some student test scores and other factors as points that teachers could earn to qualify for extra money in their paychecks.

But when the district submitted the application, PED said it had to add a factor that would include as one of the incentives scores from the state's largest standardized test that date up to three years ago. That's part of the framework the state uses for evaluating teachers.

Meyer says the district added this without the union's blessing.

"We believe they need to negotiate with us or submit the initial application," she says. "High-stakes testing isn't really what we're interested in."

SFPS Chief of Staff Latifah Phillips says that philosophically, both the district and the union agree on the issue of not wanting to include dated test scores as one of the incentives. Ideally, teachers would be able to work on improving their students' test scores throughout the year for a reward, Phillips says. But she adds that the district cannot qualify for the extra money if it doesn't comply with PED's demand using test score results. That part, she says, was non-negotiable.

"It's not going to be perfect," Phillips says. "We see it as a starting point."

She adds that all the district is allowed to send the amending application to PED because all they're doing is simply asking for money. If PED accepts the school district's application and grants it incentive money, then the district would have to come back and negotiate with the union on how that money gets spent.

"The district can seek any type of additional funding," Phillips says. "But the compensation portion is a matter we do negotiate."

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