After a couple months of delays, the William S. Hart Union High School District governing board on Wednesday officially ratified the 2023-24 contract with the classified employees’ union.
The contract calls for 2% salary increases and 2% off-schedule payments for all classified employees — most employees of the district who are not teachers or administrators.
In total, the district is set to incur a cost of just under $3.5 million under those terms, retroactive to July 1, 2023.
The Hart district, as did all other public school districts across California, received cost-of-living adjustments of 8.07%.
“We are very happy that the governing board voted to approve the tentative agreement for 2023-24 and are looking forward to negotiations for 2024-25,” Mia Reed, president of CSEA Chapter 349, said in a prepared statement. “This is a long time coming in showing the classified employees that we are an important component to the success of our students.”
On top of salaries, the district and union agreed on revisions to six other sections of the contract, according to Collyn Nielsen, assistant superintendent of human resources.
A tentative agreement between the union and the district had been reached at the same time that the Hart District Teachers Association reached an agreement in the spring. The salary increases were the same for both unions.
However, while the HDTA contract was ratified by the board shortly after the tentative agreements were struck, the CSEA contract could not be ratified due to its agreement not being valid at the time, according to Reed, as the chapter had yet to sunshine the articles for negotiations for the 2024-25 school year.
The governing board had been set to ratify the CSEA contract in July, but that was pushed back due to the Los Angeles County Office of Education needing to sign off on the appropriate forms prior to full ratification from the governing board, according to Nielsen.
“Public school employers are required to publicly disclose major provisions of any collective bargaining agreement via the form known as AB 1200,” said Ralph Peschek, assistant superintendent of business services. “Just as we adopt our budget on a three-year cycle, this reflects what the impact over a three-year cycle will be, and we have received confirmation from the L.A. County Office of Education last week in written format that they approved the AB 1200 as a positive certification to our budget.”
Salaries are not set to be negotiated for either HDTA or CSEA for the 2024-25 school year, as memorandums of understanding were approved in July that say the unions would not negotiate those terms unless the COLA for 2024-25 is more than 2.5%. Salary negotiations would have to be opened no later than Dec. 31.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $297.9 billion spending plan in June that calls for a 1.07% COLA for school districts. The initial budget proposal in January had larger cuts to school funding, but $5.5 billion of that was delayed until future years, as reported by CalMatters.
