Transcripts For SFGTV 20101020

you really care for me, so it won't happen again. i can't seem to be quiet any longer. i love this school district. i want you to love me back. do the right thing and give me my pension and will allow me to retire with dignity. thank you. [cheers and applause] president kim: that's a hard act to follow. >> my name is mary and i have been working in this district in this capacity for 34 years. i first started when i was going to college at the age of 20. it's very dishearten inc. and very disheart inc.. it is hard for me to get my words out right. you all have parents. think about if your parent were to retire and get by the time i retire at least maybe six years, the cost of living is going to go up. as a student adviser, we haven't gotten a raise and stuck at $25 for the last 100 years. i don't even know when was the last time we got a raise. so i mean the insults are really there. they are slapping us in the face. i don't mind working like a dog but i refuse to be treated like one. give me the retirement that i deserve and give the young ones that are coming up the retirement packages that they deserve or else you're going to lose them. you're going to lose them. thank you. >> i'm here as the representative of teachers in our district. i'm a teacher in a middle school and here in solidarityy with the paras of this district. i'm so ashamed of how we treat paras and they deserve a decent pension and we should make that happen. the disparity between teachers' pensions and paras pensions are shock inc. i work with them every day, side by side and i see their important work. i was present at the board meet inc. the night you voted not to give pink slips and i was so proud. it felt right and we all knew it was right >> i have been working in the district for 10 years. and it's interesting as i was walking up i saw a banner that said sfusd, world class schools. last year, i worked with a teacher, special ed math teacher and together with my initiative really, we decided we weren't going to let our talented math students fall by the wayside just because they were in special ed, so we put together a program to address those students who had ability and the special ed test scores went up by 50 percent in geometry as well as in other areas. i have seen so many beautiful, talented, but learning different children blossom with the help of their paras. it frightens me when i was 20, i worked two summers for greyhound and may get more from that pension than the work i have done with passion and with great care for these beautiful children of our city. i think whoever spoke from low well, the sociology teacher, said the morale is reflected in the way its employees, its backbone is treated. and when you treat the people who care for children like this, eventually, it does trickle down to them know matter how hard we try. please stop that now and give us a decent pension as your fellow city members and as your fellow educators. thank you. [applause] >> good evening. my name is gail and i work as an elementary adviser at an elementary school and it will be 10 years and i will be 60 years old and i can retire with $150, which is $5 less than my premiums will be for my medical. so that makes it tough. if i wait two more years, i would probably get about $900 from social security, but i can't do that. the other thing that is frighten inc., i only get $36,000. >> i'm here to ask you to support compensate inc. paras for the hard work they do. i'm a special education teacher and the work they have done has been invaluable. they work very hard. they have a stressful job and often a danger outside job. they tutor students one-on-one, small groups and diffuse emotional situations and are invaluable. it is incredibly difficult to recruit new ones to this district and if we don't do something about retirement, it will be even more difficult. thank you. and that they could communicate to me accurately and that we could have small groups. we could have additional supervision of children. that there was communication individually with children, so much more could get accomplished and be done in the terms of how that particular classroom or group would function and to me, it is extremely important that this district attract and keep good paraprofessionals. and during the years i have seen an erosion of layoffs, which shifted them from one place to another, which reduced their numbers and then to retire as far as the individually contracted people with substitutes or not. they are on the lowest part of the running in terms of putting something aside for their future. it's obvious and if they have been promised to be in a system that will support them when they retire so they know they can exist outside of the classroom, it is important legally, morally and in every other term to go through that which has been contracted and make sure they are secure, because even as retired paraprofessionals they have use on the community and very important and important for the substitute teachers that there are people who will come in and be willing to work in this district. so that is my take on the subject. [applause] >> good evening, president kim and school board commissioners, superintendent garcia, staff and all. my name is roberto, i'm the special ed person you have been hearing about. but i'm the sergeant at arms for the teachers union of san francisco. and what brings me before you is that you probably heard it all by now, but i want to touch on specifically on the matter that the social security is actually the best thing for some of us to be in it. and i specifically want the commissioners to be able to understand this and be able to tell the administration to fix this, this should have been fixed in 1992 and it's the legal thing to do and moral thing to do. do it now, please. >> good evening, my name is dorothy and i have worked in this district for 29 years. i'm old enough to retire, but i cannot and i will tell you why. this school district coerced me and others in order to give up social security. i wanted both. the district said no. and promised me that my previous work in the private sector guaranteed me full social security benefits at the time of my retirement. this district never told me or any of us about the windfall elimination provision, nor the government pension offset to two federal laws which reduce and possibly eliminate our social security benefits because of p and rs. this means that i'm unable to file for social security benefits under my husband's higher social security balance. if my husband dies before i do, i will not be entitled to his survivor benefits. this will leave me destitute. and it gets worse. yesterday, i called and i learned that should i die shortly after beginning to draw my benefits, my spouse will not receive one penny of the balance in my account and i wonder how many people know that. is this a retirement plan that you would like to have? i doubt that. you owe us more than this. please, act now to rectify this injustice, get us, get me back into social security. [cheers and applause] >> good evening. this is my tenth year working for the san francisco school district. i'm a special ed para. i don't know what to say. should i work for another 10 years or quit my job. please change the policy, please. for all the new ones. and it is my tenth year. thank you. [applause] >> good evening. i am a special ed para and have been working in san francisco for the past 27 years as of october 3. i'm not going to be able to retire soon because i won't be able to. we all live in the most expensive city in the union and what am i go go to do? how am i go go to support myself. if your plan is much better than mine, i would love to have it and trade it off and let you guys understand what we have to go through. this is about survival. we haven't had a raise. we haven't had a cost of living. all we have is a messed up retirement plan that is not going to benefit us in any way, shape or form. i hope that you have heard us and i really hope that you are listen ingand pay ingattention and want ingto change this for the better for all of us. i love what i do, but when it's time for me to go, i want to go with some dignity and know ingthat my district respected me enough to get us out of a travesty. i want my money and enough money to survive on. i want enough money that if i want to take a trip, i want to be able to do that. i might be like they are on tv, eating dog food and i'm not having that. so i'm hoping that you do change this so if we have a choice. yes, we can get social security, but let me put my money where i want my money to go so it will benefit me. so that's all i have to say. i hope you guys act on that. thank you. >> good evening, i'm anthony sing willing will ton and worked at -- anthony singleton. when i first came in, i was a transition specialist. before that -- for nine years and classroom for five years. i returned to being a transition specialist and now i'm a member of the executive board of the san francisco teachers union or educators of san francisco, excuse me. when i first was coerced into signing up for this, the agents told me that upon retirement that the district would match anything that -- everything that i had contributed. and i just found out maybe a few weeks ago that that's not going to happen. and so now at $80,000, i will only have that much and now it turns out that as of a few weeks ago, i found that social security will not honor or match -- will not match -- will not match what i have contributed or they will -- subtract whatever social security i get. now as of working with the san francisco school district, i also worked for the san francisco recreation and parks department for 15 years ain worked for a company and i'm very concerned about this. so as it turns out, since the school district is not going to match my funds, this is no more than than a ponzi scheme in the end and i hope that the district will give us social security and help us have -- get our money, ok? thank you very much. [cheers and applause] >> i have been a special ed paraprofessional and have been here in this district for about nine years and few years in another district. and i'm outraged after hearing what the union has to tell us the other night that the district does not want to put in the money, just the last three years or four years and has been since 1992 that they haven't been putting in this money and i stand here before all of you for the paras that are not here right now having other jobs not knowing how they are going to live when they get to the end of their lives and you people are going to have us on your payroll for a long time because we can't retire. i mean, i do have social security, but that's not great either. but little bit taken away from that because we have this pension, which is not a pension. it's a disgrace. and i think it's criminal. and i call it white collar crime. [applause] >> my name is tom and i'm a para. this was a unique milestone, 20th year as a paraprofessional in the district and has been with the severely impaired. 20 years of autism, downs syndrome, developmentally delays and a whole lot of combinations. it's been interesting. i'm not here to complain. i knew it was going to be difficult work when i applied. however, over the last two decades, i have given the job best of my time, education and energy. i think it's only basic fairness the district fulfill its commitment. i'm asking for three things, sign the memorandum of understanding so that the impasse can be resolved and we can start negotiate ingon this, let us out of p and rs. it is fraud and white collar crime and let us into s.s.i. i have fulfilled my part of the contract. it is upon your part to fulfill the contract. thank you, good night. [applause] >> members of the board, superintendent garcia, ladies and gentlemen, my colleagues, i say good evening to you and thank you for coming out tonight. it's wonderful to see you and hear you present your case to the members of the board of education. when there was negotiations for the years, our goal was to bargain a substantially improved retirement system and an m.o.u. was signed in 2006 to establish a committee that would write a wriret a report. here we are more than four years without a resolution to this issue. as you know, this stems from the movement of most of the paraprofessionals about into the system and out of social security. in 1993, we now know that this was improper and i would also say illegal. all of these years, the paraprofessionals should have been kept in social security we are in violation of section 218 of the california state code. in the time that we have tried to work with the district on this problem, the district has refused to deal with it, refused to hear it. the district has said it is the union's fault. they have said that they don't have attorneys who have this kind of expertise and yet months have passed and finally the same faces have sat across the table with us. they have failed to respond to our attorney in a timely manner. they have plead ignorance of the system. how does it work exactly? they have said it will take many months to change their accounting systems. they have pleaded that they are june prepared to do any of these things. at no time did we have the confidence that they were speaking sincerely. even today, we have asked that no highers and people who are young enough to work enough years to earn the 40 yaurs necessary to be retiring be placed into social security and they have told us they can't think about doing this until june of 2011. the district's latest offer will only partially correct the damage that is done to our employees, but each individual will be subject to a contingency that we think means that they will never be compensated for the harm done to them. this has gone on -- i will wrap up. it is time for -- >> let her finish. >> it has gone on too long and it is time for this board to direct the superintendent and staff to find a way to make this right. it's a legal issue, but also a matter of justice for its employees. we teach our children that when they have made a mistake, they must be held accountable and they must face the evidence and the facts. [applause] >> the paraprofessionals of this district are counting on you, the governing board, their employers to make this right to solve this problem now. thank you for hearing what we have had to say. [cheers and applause] >> i would like to make a few comments on this. as i always tell my children, the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. >> no, it doesn't. >> i never interrupted you. i would ask the same courtesy that we model for our children. what i would want to say is this. we are absolutely committed to moving -- we don't think that this is a good system, we never have. june fortunately -- and when people say it's the district, ok, this is a negotiated item. i'm not here to blame everybody on this. it is what it is. we are committed to fixing this. there are no ifs and buts. we have to fix this. we were just as appalled to see how this system works and we want to fix this. when anyone says that the district was not being responsible, we were functioning, the district, under a collective bargain ingagreement that was made. whether it was good or bad, that was negotiated. now we could spend a lot of time talking about what happened. i don't care what happened. it is what it is and right in front of us and we have to fix it and we are committed to moving people into social security. absolutely. that's not even a date among us. that has to happen, because it's the right thing to do and we are going to do that. we have a few minor stick ingpoints because there are allegations that we have a responsibility. we don't know -- when we move forward ingwe are trying to find a way in order to meet our liability and meet our obligation to our employees. we are working diligently to solve this. but the solution of solving this is not going to be this way or this way, but this way, somehow in the middle and we are willing and committed to make that happen. and the other thing. remember -- i have heard people say people were railroaded into this, i don't know, i wasn't here. but i will tell you that people voted to have this happen, this plan. excuse me. i'm just going on the record, because that's what -- we have to request -- excuse me, we are going to have to request a vote of the people, of your unit to want to go into social security into a new system and in fact, we are making commitments under this plan that we would put out to bid a new provider so we could see who offers our employees the best deal. we are willing to make that commitment. i understand your frustration. i don't blame you for being frustrated, but we are going to solve this issue. thank you. president kim: on behalf of the board, i do want to thank our staff for coming out today. this is an issue that i think many of us were surprised to find out and we appreciate you coming out to educate us on your stories and we appreciate the work that you do. and we know that you are some of our longest staff members here working with our children and we appreciate the work that you do. so thanking the time out to speak with us and we know we are going to keep communicateing. so thank you very much. our next item is item k and folks will be moving in and out. advisory committee reports appointments. seeing none, on to t

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