The latest vote to decertify Gompers’ teachers union comes after years of back and forth. The issues animating it are strikingly similar to past efforts.
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After fighting more than two years to justify its existence, the teachers union at San Diego’s Gompers charter school has reached its first contract agreement with school leadership.
The contract, if formally approved by union membership and the Gompers school board, would give a 4 percent raise to Gompers teachers making $100,000 or less annually, as well as a $2,000 bonus to all educators.
The contract also would continue to require teachers to provide summer school and tutoring for students.
“I am personally feeling very grateful that we have finally reached a contract,” said Vallery Campos, a seventh-grade English teacher at Gompers who helped organize the teachers union. “This contract is going to really help us to attract and retain teachers, and that’s going to be super critical for ensuring that students continue to attain and reach all of their goals.”
Cecil Steppe: Why is our superintendent revoking these rights? Why now?”
On Tuesday, January 12, parents and teachers from Gompers Preparatory Academy pleaded with the San Diego Unified school board to restore on-loan agreements the district made with four of their founding staff members 15 years ago.
Director Vincent Riveroll, executive assistant Paz Garcia, assistant director Lisa Maples and Welcome Center lead Judith Franceschi were notified a year in advance their on-loan status would be phased out July 1, 2021. They would have to choose between keeping their jobs at the Chollas View charter school or keeping their employment with the district.
Deidre Walsh, director of the district’s Office of Charter Schools, stated in an October 27, 2020 memo, “As members represented by the district’s labor organizations, the four on-loan employees receive district salaries and benefits, as well as other protections and benefits offered by the collective bargaining agreements. In c
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The principal and three other employees at a popular southeast San Diego charter school are likely to stay now that the San Diego Unified School Board has voted unanimously to let them keep their benefits.
The vote came Tuesday, after lobbying by leaders, parents and other supporters of the school, Gompers Preparatory Academy. Some supporters had feared the four founding employees would leave Gompers if they were to lose their benefits.
But critics say those benefits the founding employees get from San Diego Unified are more generous than what Gompers gives its employees, and that Gompers should improve benefits for all of its employees.