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District examines 95-5

Teachers' union contract negotiations continue

By Justin Berton

The Sunnyvale School District could be fined more than $1 million if voters pass the 95-5 initiative in June, Superintendent Joe Rudnicki said at the Feb. 5 board meeting.

The initiative, Proposition 223, would require school districts to spend 95 percent of their money on classroom needs and 5 percent on administrative costs.

If voters pass the initiative, the district would have to implement the changes by fall of 1999.

Rudnicki will deliver a report at the March 5 meeting on the specific impacts the proposed initiative will have on the district.

Currently, the Sunnyvale district is operating at about 92-8, according to deputy superintendent Ben Picard.

"This would have a major impact on us if this went into effect," Picard said.

To bring administrative costs down 3 percent, each school will have to absorb administrative tasks currently performed at the district offices, such as payroll.

"Some things are just much more cost-efficient if they're done out of one office," Picard said.

The district would have to reallocate about $1.3 million to meet the 95-5 requirement.

"Smaller districts would tend to get hurt [if the initiative passes]," Rudnicki said, noting that large school districts have more revenue to maneuver with.

If the initiative passes and the district can't reach the 95-5 requirement, it would be fined 5 percent of its state funding, a little more than $1 million.

It is unclear whether the 95-5 initiative would affect current labor negotiations with the teachers' union.

The board has not reached an agreement with the teachers, but negotiations are going well, according to both sides.

Board president Linda Kilian said the style of negotiating--wherein both sides state their interests as opposed to collective bargaining--is contributing to the length of the process.

"We're not going back and forth, back and forth, on what we want. Instead, we're discussing what both of our interests are," she said.

Jed Cyr, spokesman for the Sunnyvale Educators Association, said the union is not concerned with the progress of the talks.

"It's not uncommon for these negotiations to go well into the spring," Cyr said last week. The teachers have been operating without a contract since June 1997.

One of the issues in the board's 13-point interest statement is increase instruction time, a topic discussed at a special community forum last month.

The teachers' contract needs to be restructured to accommodate the lengthening of the day or year.

In other action at the Feb. 5 meeting, the board voted to raise the pay rate of substitute teachers. According to findings by the superintendent, class-size reduction in the neighboring school districts has created a demand for quality substitute teachers. A memo to the board from Rudnicki states, "In order to have an edge on those school districts that surround us, we need to maintain a daily rate in excess of most of our neighbors."

Substitutes will earn $95 for a full day of work, the same amount paid by Campbell and Los Gatos Union, but more than what the Cupertino and Santa Clara districts pay.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, February 18, 1998.
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