And the Bargaining has Begun!

We met at CVMS Friday the 16th of November and began negotiations between the administration of EPS and the Employee's of EPS. Interestingly the administration tried to tell us that we were not employees for the purposes of negotiations, and therefore could not be on the negotiation team or at negotiations during duty time, but administrators could. As I was not in the room during this conversation I can't tell you exactly what transpired, nor am I supposed to - until agreements are reached the negotiations are essentially secret.

However is it not typical of the district to claim that we, the district employees, are not employees for the purposes of negotiations? Instead that we represent the union, not the district, as if the district is negotiating with some unknown entity - or for that matter a known entity it considered hostile. Why do you suppose they find it so hard to believe that highly educated and very dedicated professional people such as ourselves would want to work towards creating a better, fairer, more humane, and higher achieving district? A district whose even greater successes and achievements would make us feel even more pride than we do about our efforts and the goals we have met?

Approximately 16 of us walked into the negotiating room Friday evening - physically representing custodians, counselors, reading coaches, elementary teachers, mid-school teachers, and high school teachers - spiritually representing every single distinct employee in every job category except administrator and legally representing all employees except administrators, office managers and confidential employees.

Our Lead Negotiator - Laurel Fain - opened the negotiations with this short speech -

On September 12, the Employees of Espanola Public Schools made history. On that day, they declared two things:
1. Change was necessary and critical
2. They had faith in their colleagues who were a part of NEA to represent them in making those changes.

The statements were important, but not historic. What was historic was the unanimity of the employees' voice. Fewer than 4 of every 100 employees in the district disagreed with those two assertions. Fewer than 4 in every 100 disagreed.

Never, in the history of public school employees in New Mexico, and perhaps in the realm of public employees statewide and nationwide, have employees been so united in their desire for change.

So, I congratulate each of us in being here today. Our meeting today begins an unprecedented opportunity to Reach Excellence Together. We sit at this table today in a way that has not been done within this state before. We are making history.

I would like to introduce the members of our teams. After I speak the name of each member, I ask each to state their position and school or site. I am Laurel Fain. I am a teacher at Carlos Vigil Mid High School.

She then introduced the members of the negotiation teams for Certified, and for the ESP teams, and then the members of the Support Team. At that time the support team members retired to a caucus room to work on negotiation documents while the negotiating team negotiated the ground rules, and dates, times and places for future negotiations. Here are the agreed upon dates, times, and places for future negotiations. It is quite possible that more negotiation dates will be agreed upon at some point in time - if more dates are agreed upon, I will post those too.

Negotiation Dates -
ESP - Always 4.30 pm, always EVHS Conference room

1. January 7th
2. February 5th
3. March 4th
4. April 8th
5. May 5th

Certified - Always 4.30 pm, always CVMS Conference Room

1. December 11
2. January 22
3. February 19
4. March 25
5. April 22

Española-NEA welcomes and encourages all members of the bargaining unit (anyone who could vote in the bargaining election, whether they did or not) to show up before the beginning of the bargaining session to show your support for your team, to make suggestions and share ideas on how to better the district.

We also welcome any members who wish to have a more formal hand in the negotiations to join the support team - you may do so by emailing espanola.nea@gmail.com or sending a letter to any of the Española-NEA officers.

To all members of the bargaining unit - I suggest to you that if there was ever a time to stand up for what you believe is right and proper in our workplace, NOW IS THAT TIME! We can Reach Excellence Together and we will do so with your support United We Bargain for mutually agreeable rules in the work place with mutual respect, Divided We Beg for anything we might want or need, including dignity.

I hope everyone will come to CVMS on Dec 11th before 4.30 to shake the hands of the Certified Bargaining team as they go into begin negotiations - See you there!

Recent News -

Hi All -

Sorry I didn't post anything last weekend - things were up in the air and I kept waiting to see if anything resolved. And it did - about mid week. We now have a date for our first meeting with Mr. John Martinez, and the rest of the administrations bargaining team. The purpose of the meeting will be to introduce the -we assume - three negotiation teams to each other (two for us, classified and certified and one for them administration) set the ground rules for negotiations, and set several dates for future negotiating sessions.

The date and time for this will be 4:30 on Friday the 16th of November.

And this ushers in a new age and reality for all of us. How interesting and strange it feels - to see our hard work actually make a change.

We have our first newsletter nearly ready to print, and I expect we will be getting it to you in the next week or so.

The bargaining team continues to meet and train, the support team is busy putting together positions on results of survey - we continue to plumb the data for indications of what is most important and to whom, and what other information we can glean from the results. Thank you all who filled in the survey and returned it. This information will help us tremendously.

We have an Employee Rights committee formed, they are working on learning the ropes, the ins and outs of the school and district policies and how those are affected by Collective Bargaining, and what proper procedures are when there is conflict and misunderstanding. Anyone interested in being part of the Employee Rights committee please indicate by email to espanola.nea@gmail.com and we will get right to you.

If you are interested in working on any of our other committees, please indicate by email to espanola.nea@gmail.com as always there is plenty to be done and your commitment can be as little as an hour a month or as much as you like. Remember WE are the NEA.

Till next week.

Brian