Good evening NEA-Jurupa Family,
I hope that this email finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. I wanted to share with you that the Association and District reached an agreement last night regarding our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for returning to school. I would like to give a huge thank you to George Monge, Jacquelyn Santillan, Dan Olguin, and John Vigrass for all of your work on this. The team met for upwards of 20 hours over the last week and a half, and a had a marathon day yesterday of over 9 hours (7.5 hrs with the district). I even missed my son’s college orientation meetings in order to get this work done. Additionally, thank you to the NEA-Jurupa Executive Board for being a huge part of this process and to all of you, our members, for your advocacy, for sharing your questions and concerns, and for your grace, kindness, patience, and understanding through this process.
Our overarching priorities during negotiations were Health and Safety, Flexibility and Accountability, and Providing Excellent Instructional Opportunities for our Students. Additionally, we had to adhere to the guidelines set forth by the state including number of school days, number of instructional minutes, mandatory attendance, daily live interactions, and providing social-emotional support.
Here are some of the most important points for you:
1. All members are expected to work their professional work day of either 7.5 or 8 hrs.
2. Flexibility in Worksite: Members have the option of working from either their classroom/school site or from home. You do not need to provide any type of documentation. You will need to notify your site administrator of your plans. If you choose to work from home and would like to come to your site, you need to provide 48 hours notice to your site administrator.
3. Instructional Minutes: You must in engage in daily live “synchronous” interaction with your students. The number of minutes varies based on grade level. TK-K: 75 minutes (with 15 minutes of daily “morning meetings”), 1-6: 2 hrs 15 mins (with 15 minutes of daily “morning meetings”), and 7-12: 2 hrs 15 mins (45 minutes/period) and two 20 minute advisory periods per week. Site schedules are still being worked on, secondary sites will have 3 period block schedules daily. It is important to note that live interaction is not limited to direct instruction.
4. 30 minutes of daily office hours.
5. Evaluations: we will revisit this piece prior to Sept 1.
6. Meetings: The contract language remains intact. 1 required meeting per week, no more than 45 minutes. We also agreed to suspend both minimum days and late start days to allow flexibility for meeting dates.
7. All other provisions of the Collective Bargaining Unit remain intact.
There were many other issues discussed during our sessions not specifically related to negotiations.
• We pressed for continuing professional development to be made available for our members within the contractual work day, but outside of the instructional times.
• We also requested that consumables, paper packets, textbooks, and additional supplies by made available for our students (under the Williams Act, students are required to have all adopted textbooks at home whether you utilize them or not). The methods for passing these items out are still under discussion.
The official document will be sent out tomorrow, but I wanted to provide you with this news.
Please be assured that as we venture on this new school year, that even though there will be hiccups and unforeseen issues that arise, that the Association will continue to work with the district to resolve any problems.
Again, thank you all so much for everything you do for our staff, students, and community. You are truly appreciated.
In Unity-
Wendy Eccles 🙂
NEA-Jurupa, President
Office Phone: 951-681-7997
Non-district email: president@neaj.org
Website: www.neaj.org
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