Submitted by California Teachers Association (CTA)

Fillmore Unified Teachers Association June 1, 2017

Fillmore Unified School District Still Holds Up 201 7-18 School Year Calendar

Fillmore Teachers met Wednesday with Fillmore Unified School District to continue labor negotiations. The goal for both sides was to finally get a 2017-18 school calendar and possibly agree on a weekly or monthly meeting program for teachers to collaborate.

The Fillmore Teachers have been trying to get an agreement on the calendar since December 2016. The District’s delay has placed many families in limbo as they try and plan vacations, etc. for the coming months, but FUSD kept insisting there would be no agreement on a calendar unless the fall break was eliminated. Teachers wanted to continue the week-long fall break that they believe has benefited our students for over 25 years.

After a grueling long day of negotiations both sides thought there might be an agreement in sight. It came down to FUSD insisting that students must stay in school an extra 15 minutes a day for there to be a late start day on Wednesday to hold teacher collaboration meetings. The students in Fillmore Unified School District currently exceed by the thousands the required number of minutes in the CA Ed Code and there is no need to make students stay an extra 15 minutes. Teachers believe the students already have reached their maximum learning capacity by the end of the day and that adding more minutes will create student burnout and behavior problems. Making students stay an extra 15 minutes is not going to affect student achievement.

Yet despite the teachers’ educational beliefs on the lack of academic and emotional benefits for adding minutes to the end of the school day they were willing to agree to adding 7 extra minutes to get an agreement on a 2017-18 school calendar. FUSD refused and left the negotiation table insisting on adding the 15 extra minutes for teacher collaboration meetings or no calendar with a fall break!

Yes, you read that correctly, for only 7 minutes a day or at the secondary level about 1 minute per class period FUSD is holding up establishing a calendar for students, parents and employees for the 2017-2018 school year.

Please come and support the teachers and educators at the next school board meeting on Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 6:30.

F U T A is an affiliate of the 325, 000-member California Teachers Association and is also affiliated with the 3 million-member National Education