When the new president of the Tucson Education Association, Jason Freed, appeared on a local newscast this week, Tucson Unified School District teachers were shocked when he implied that they were satisfied with the new contract awarded Dr. H.T. Sanchez.
According to the report filed by Valarie Cavasos with KGUN9, she had spoken to teachers who were outraged and wondered “why isn’t the TEA outraged?” Freed told Cavasos, “The feeling from the number of teachers and support staff I’ve talked to is that our district is going in an improved direction.”
That statement set TUSD teachers’ cellphone ringing as they called each other wondering just who Freed might be referring to. According to teachers, they know of no one except a few union members and administrative staff who are happy with the direction the District is going.
The truth be told, there are only a few union members in the teaching ranks at TUSD. So few in fact, that according to various reports, the union does not qualify to engage in collective bargaining. Due to the control of the union by Congressman Raul Grijalva and by extension his daughter TUSD Board president Adelita Grijalva, the District defies law and allows the union to represent the teachers at the bargaining table. So, when Freed says he speaks for the union, in essence, he is speaking for the Grijalvas.
One topic of conversation in those teachers’ telephone calls was an email that is circulating among District personnel in which it is revealed that Sanchez “cashed out 18 sick days in his first year. On his second year, just ended, he cashed out 29 days. That means he has 30+30-18-29 equals 13 days that he actually used as vacation. Or it is possible that some of those 13 are unused and he is carrying them over instead of cashing them? However, the daily rate equals (base salary)/260. Example: next year base is $260,000 so daily rate is $1,000. Base in first two years was $210,000.” In other words, Sanchez will earn more than half of the salary of a veteran teacher from turning in his sick days alone.
Teachers say that the union hasn’t produced an increase in pay for sick days or anything else except the meager $500 raise – for some – this year. This amounts to about half of the money they spend each year, out of their own pockets, to equip their classrooms. From toilet tissue to hand sanitizer, the TUSD teachers buy their own supplies at the beginning and throughout the school year.
At $5.74 a 12 pack, the $29,000 Sanchez is expected to collect in sick day pay, would cover the cost of 60,627 rolls of toilet paper. That is not the bulk rate for tissue; as a result the $29,000 could buy far more than 5,052 12 packs of toilet tissue one could purchase at Walmart on any given day.
A retired teacher with vast experience with teacher unions around the country stated, “Until a group of teachers attempts to establish a different organization as the exclusive bargaining agent, or the Governing Board denies TEA the right to represent the bargaining unit, no change for the better will be the lot of TUSD’s teaching staff. Given the current make-up of the Governing Board, only a challenge of TEA’s status by a well organized group of teacher leaders, will lead to an election to determine who gets to represent TUSD’s teachers. TEA will use all the scare tactics they can think of to defeat a challenge, but if the group challenging TEA is led by a credible group of respected teachers it is certainly possible to defeat a union leadership that has clearly failed in its duty to represent so many members of the bargaining unit.”
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