Teachers Union Prexy Tells School Board Health Benefits Are Foremost

• Draws ‘Line in the Sand’ over Members’ Medical Coverage

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

Angry and concerned teachers co-opted a special meeting of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board of education meeting last Thursday that was supposed to focus on reviewing and updating district policies.
The teachers were there to protest an issue that was not on the meeting agenda—a proposal to cut employee medical benefits as a way to partially close the gap on a potential $10 million revenue decline in the district over the next 18 months.
A week earlier, at the May 7 board of education meeting in Malibu, Harry Keily, president of the Santa Monica Malibu California Teachers Association, backed by two dozen district teachers, told the board that he was there to “publicly express displeasure with the district.”
Keily stated on May 7 that health care “is the single most important issue” for teachers. “We are not in denial about the economy,” he said. “We know that class sizes will be larger and there will be fewer teachers...but no one impacts children more.”
Keily warned the board that “a line has been drawn in the sand” and that the teachers intended to continue with a “public expression of displeasure” at future meetings. Keily honored that promise, packing the May 14 meeting at the district office with a standing-room-only crowd of unhappy educators.
Over a hundred district teachers, some with their children and family members, were there in what Keily called a show of “unity and solidarity.” Keily is proposing that the district tap its reserves to maintain funding for teacher health care, on the basis that the rainy day the reserve is intended for has arrived.
Board members replied that they are listening and attempting to do their best in what one board member described as “a disastrous potential budget.”
The agenda for the May 14 meeting was supposed to be devoted to the staff recommendation to review and update administration, personnel and board by-laws. The revisions are required so the district can maintain its policies and administrative regulations in compliance with state and federal educational codes and law.
According to the staff report, the board’s decisions will be adopted at a subsequent board of education meeting, when district staff will recommend that “the board delete all current policies, administrative regulations in these articles and adopt those reviewed and recommended for Board adoption.”
Once approved, the new articles will go into effect on Aug 1, 2009. A second board of education meeting is scheduled for May 28, to continue the process with articles pertaining to business and non-instructional operations, students and facilities. A third meeting on the revisions is also planned but a date has not yet been announced.