“What did they know, and when did they know it?” That’s the question posed by negotiators for the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers on a recent episode of “Teacher, speak out!” on Community Television.

The more-than-yearlong labor negotiations reached an impasse last May, went into mediation in July, but came to a screeching halt at the end of November. The district willingly accepted the union’s offer of 12 furlough days over two years (saving $3.2 million) but offered nothing of value in return — not even binding arbitration to address union-wide issues, which teachers require in the interest of fairness, and which costs the district nothing. Why, the question was posed, is binding arbitration OK for companies doing business with the district but not OK for teachers?

Then, the very day after negotiations broke down, the district suddenly found additional money. With that, Pajaro Valley Unified School District administrators dropped concession demands and canceled further negotiations. That was good news for teachers, but the timing of the discovery raised suspicions and prompted the Nixon-era query. After all, did those funds materialize the day after teachers were pressured to accept an offer? Or was it the day before?

No doubt, the state’s education cuts have been ominous. But PVUSD’s response and helter-skelter approach to prioritizing needs has compounded the problem. There’s been no public process in setting priorities. No budget committee with teachers, parents and community members was ever convened. The district’s thoroughly lame, after-the-fact attempts to communicate with the public were embarrassing. At the session I attended, administrators outnumbered the public 6 to 1.

In early rounds of budget cuts, a majority of five board members chose to layoff teachers and eliminate class size reduction for kindergarten and third grade. That prompted many teachers to challenge the board’s commitment to student achievement. Those board members appear convinced that maintaining a strong leadership team is critical to the district’s future, but keeping teachers in the classrooms is not.

So far, teachers are the only employee group to receive a pay cut this year. PVAM, the district’s management association, has considered furlough days but has made no commitment. Then there are those at the top of the food chain with the word “superintendent” attached to their title and out-of-proportion, no-cut contracts in their pockets. They have given nothing. In fact, their contracts actually generated salary increases for this year and last! Since those contracts were set to expire in June, we’ll be holding our breath to learn whether board members dial back their earlier largesse or add to it.

So, what can we expect heading into the final semester of the 2009-10 school year? For one, every classroom — in district budget parlance — will be “loaded to the max,” as if class size doesn’t matter. Though teachers likely won’t be asked for additional concessions this year, just-released California Department of Education data show their average salary has dropped for the second consecutive year.

PVUSD again is dead last in average teacher salary for all unified districts of 4,000 to 40,000 enrollment. With the expected exodus of higher-salaried, more experienced teachers — some being coaxed with monetary incentives into early retirement — PVUSD’s teacher corps may soon be the lowest paid, least experienced in the entire state.

Achievement mandates — No Child Left Behind and soon Race to the Top — are not going away, and teachers know who will be held accountable. They also know who should be: board trustees Willie Yahiro, Leslie DeRose, Kim Turley, Libbie Wilson and Doug Keegan. Those trustees proclaimed intentions to keep cuts away from classrooms, but the firewall of protection they’ve created around The Towers, and the administrators clustered there, belies their intentions. Those board members must be held accountable. Their decisions threaten to nullify the academic gains our teachers have nurtured over the past decade.

Our students will march along, each less prepared for the next grade than they were for the grade before. District leaders will remain comfortable in their fourth-floor offices. Four board members, however, may not fare so well when the public weighs in on what has happened. That will be at the voting booth on Nov. 2.

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Peter Nichols is a Larkins Valley resident, the husband of PVUSD board member Sandra Nichols, and a member of the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers. “Teacher, speak out!” is a co-production of Peter Nichols and the PVFT. Episodes are available online at: www.TeacherSpeakOut.com. The opinions of columnists are not necessarily those of the Register-Pajaronian.

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