Bargaining Update: Protected Individual Planning Time Increased

USEP and the District reached a tentative agreement last night on two significant pieces of contract terms.  The District agreed to the Union’s proposal and planning time by agreeing to increase overall and individual planning time for teachers by 50 minutes each week.  This means teachers will have 300 overall minutes of planning each week instead of the current 250, with an increase from 100 to 150 minutes of “protected” individual planning time to plan for specific classroom activities.

The parties also signed the Teacher Evaluation Memorandum for this school year that replaces the “Formal” observation with either two or three “Informal” observations for most teachers, which will count as the official Status Score (50% of overall evaluation) if those observations result in an Effective or higher rating.  The District would not agree to provide contract renewal language for Annual Contract teachers earning an Effective or Highly Effective rating.  The percentages for achieving Effective or Highly Effective will remain the same for the 2014-2015 school year.

There are still some issues remaining to be settled, which will be discussed at our next session, and the Union is preparing its first Economic Proposal to be passed soon!