Acting as the voice of the people, the Classroom Teachers Association (CTA), or “teachers’ union,” consists of various individuals who represent around 20,000 teachers, educational staff, and other professionals.
“We bargain the contract under which they work and bargain regarding issues such as wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment,” said CTA Executive Director, Stephanie Baxter-Jenkins.
The CTA interacts in correlation with the district school board, both consulting and bargaining about many policies and contracts, “They have things they want to accomplish and we have things we want to accomplish, and we go back and forth before coming to a final agreement.” said Baxter-Jenkins.
There are other instances that occur where the district isn’t required to bargain with the CTA, rather they consult with them and seek their opinions before enacting certain policies. The School Board may be the ones in charge of creating and enforcing policies that affect our education system, but the CTA also has some level of influence on those policies before they’re enacted. “We hope to have a huge influence on their decisions, given that we’re speaking for the majority of their employees,” said Baxter-Jenkins.
One such policy that is currently being proposed is the reutilization of our custodial staff, but no actions are being taken just yet.
“The district has a legal right to manage its affairs, and in doing that, they have the legal right to choose the number of employees to carry out their mission,” said Baxter-Jenkins.
The recent budget and staffing changes will be set into place next semester, and at Steinbrenner, we will unfortunately be losing our student success coach, Trina Rodriguez.
“We do remain concerned that there are a lot of things about the individuals they’re cutting, such as the programs they were managing along with the services they’ve been providing, we remain concerned about how those things are going to happen without individuals in those positions,” said Baxter-Jenkins. Some such programs at risk include the student success programs in schools across the county.
Another point of contention between the CTA and the district comes from the fact that the basic pay year for teachers began in July, but they were not granted their previous year of experience by the district until just recently. “Teachers come back to work in August, we didn’t settle their contract until a couple weeks ago,” said Baxter-Jenkins. That earned year of experience moves teachers up along the pay-scale in order to increase salaries; this means that teachers were working for nearly four months without the raises that were originally guaranteed to them.
The district has been struggling with recent leadership changes over the past two years, and the CTA had hoped that an early start during the last school year would result in contracts being settled before school started, but unfortunately that did not happen.
However, the School Board and the CTA are collaborating to produce a possible solution and ease some tensions brought about by these changes. “The superintendent has called together what he is calling a ‘Stakeholder Committee’ and that group is looking at ways to provide services in the future in a more streamlined and sustainable fashion,” said Baxter-Jenkins. CTA members will also serve as members of this committee, and other teachers will be appointed to serve to propose and settle long term decisions. “We don’t necessarily agree with the cuts, but we do pursue into our contracts, we come up with a reasonable and fair process for people to return to other jobs,” said Baxter-Jenkins.
With the recent budget crisis in Hillsborough County, it seems as though the CTA has an uphill battle to fight if they want to make significant changes to benefit our teachers, but they hope to keep working with the district in order to make as many benefits as possible a reality.
Joey Menendez//Editor-in-Chief
