At least two Orange County teacher unions are negotiating with their school districts about classroom conditions as more campuses head toward reopening to in-person instruction amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Unions representing teachers in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and Capistrano Unified School District are negotiating memorandum of understandings with their districts, school officials said on Friday, Sept. 25.
A memorandum of understanding, or commonly called MOU, is an agreement between a district and the local unions that cover changes to the learning environment, said Claudia Briggs, a spokewoman for the California Teachers Association.
Schools have encountered a plethora of alterations since the pandemic took hold mid-March, including physically closing and switching to distance learning, and these negotiations are happening as they start to transition back to campus.
Capistrano Unified is planning to launch in-person learning on Sept. 28, while Nepwort-Mesa follows on Sept. 29.
“It’s beyond crunch time,” said Tamara Fairbanks, president of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, a union that represents 1,200 teachers, nurses, librarians, counselors, social workers and therapists.
Fairbanks said the union and district negotiated for about five hours on Thursday, Sept. 24, and planned to meet again.
“We still have some ways to go, but we’re making progress and we’re having good conversations,” she said. “Unfortunately, our district prematurely set a date, but everything is not quite in a place yet.”
Fairbanks said the union’s primary concerns are about safety, including the timeliness of safety upgrades in classrooms, breaks for teachers of special needs programs, facial covering policies for the youngest students and nurses being fitted for masks.
“We want to do what is best for our students and their academics, but don’t forget about these safety aspects,” Fairbanks said.
Newport-Mesa is working on implementing the health and safety measures in its reopening plan, district spokesperson Annette Franco said.
“Schools are preparing their classrooms with plastic screens, arranging desks, visual reminders of healthy hygiene and social distancing, and making hand sanitizers and face masks available,” Franco said.
The Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers recent held a car rally. The organization also took the step of issuing the district a “cease and desist” letter on Sept. 23 about the reopening plan.
“Most districts don’t go back without a memorandum of understanding,” Fairbanks said.
In Capistrano Unified, school board president Jim Reardon said during a district meeting on Sept. 23 that the district is negotiating its third MOU with the teacher’s union.
His comments came after Capistrano Unified Education Association president Joy Schnapper criticized the district for not listening more to teachers in constructing its reopening plan.
“Middle and high school students will actually be seeing their teachers less when they return to campus,” Schnapper told the board. “Elementary students will be corralled in order to prevent inter-mingling of classes and cohorts.”
The loss of face-to-face time for high school students with their teachers has been a hot topic regarding the district’s hybrid reopening plan for older students, which rotates students between being on campus and learning remotely.
“I find that wholly unacceptable,” district parent Tiffany Vu-Conant said. “Give kids their instruction minutes.”
Schnapper, whose union represents more than 2,000 employees, said Friday the teachers union is seeking satisfaction with the safety measures and tweaking the hybrid model for high schools.
District spokesman Ryan Burris said the reopening plans have been “a very collaborative process.”
“We were one of the first school districts in the state to have a MOU with our teachers on reopening schools virtually,” he said. “We are working on our third MOU with teachers. This has taken hundreds of hours to accomplish and we’ve worked side-by-side to accomplish this.”
The reopening of schools in Orange County was specifically mentioned in a letter of concern sent by the California Teachers Association on behalf of its 300,000 members to Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials on Sept. 21.
“Teachers and education support professionals throughout the state are voicing their concerns and urging distance learning continues until conditions are safe,” the letter says.
Joyanne Goodfellow, president of the Saddleback Valley Educators Association union, said the district’s teachers are not united in either support of or disapproval of the return to in-person learning when hybrid learning begins there on Sept. 29. Any concerns the union has had, she said, have been communicated to district leadership.
The union, she said, is taking a wait-and-see approach.
“We’ve been working with the district throughout the process,” Goodfellow said. “The key is to make sure everyone’s safe.”
Staff writer Steve Fryer contributed to this report.
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