Lynwood Chapter 116

June 2009, President's Message

Hello Members, The end of the school year is here and I want to wish everyone a happy and safe summer. Many of you will be leaving your site with a number of unanswered questions regarding layoffs. It saddens me to inform you, I still do not have any new or updated information. I have asked the District for the number of CSEA positions they plan to layoff and the dollar amounts connected to those positions. They have not given me any of that information. They have talked about the possibility of furlough days, cutting hours and months and taking back the 3% raise. But they have yet to provide the requested information, for which your leadership needs to make an intelligent decision about what to present to you. With the assistance of your Vice-President, Linda Vaughan, I have communicated these and other concerns to the board on Tuesday. The following is the full text of your President’s address given at the Board meeting: Good Evening Dr. Lal, Board and Cabinet, My name is Herman Winslow and I am the President of CSEA, I represent about 500 classified employees in this District. We all are aware of the financial crisis that faces the District and the state. But we have issues in the way the District has gone about solving this crisis. I am not going to stand before you and rant and rave because I know you tune that kind of action out. But I will state a number of facts and hope you listen. I have had the opportunity to sit on a number of committees in order to help find solutions to our issues here in the District. Up to this point they have been useless. There was a document dated 6-10-09 from the Executive Committee passed out at a budget study. It implied CSEA, LTA and SEIU were involved in that document we were not. That document was a joke. The meeting prior to that document being passed out, the Executive Committee was told we were in a 5.7 million dollar hole, the document says 16.5 million. If the committee is to help solve the problem why are we not given truthful information? Not only that, how the numbers regarding the cuts were calculated are unknown. The Executive Committee had nothing to do with them; I asked a number of administrators who should have been involved in the process if they knew, they were not involved. They don’t know where those numbers came from. If that is the case, we want to know is management serious about solving this problem. The District wants to cut Classified and Certificated positions, that may or may not be needed but here is some of what I know, the board agenda today shows about 3 million dollars in warrant schedules paid, this is from May 19 to June 5th. We should have cut off req May 8th. We were doing reqs up until May 29th. The agenda today also shows $248, 000 in stipends and $15,000 to rehire a retired teacher as a consultant are we really in a crisis? I ask because we are still doing business as usual. This is the same board agenda that speaks to the lay off of Classified and Certificated positions. CSEA has ideas which it wants to share with management. We have been meeting since early January; our primary request was tell us a dollar amount they were going to cut from our unit. We want positions and the cost of each to get to that dollar amount. To this day we have not received that information. Our members are very nervous, peoples lives are at stake, and the children we help educate are being hurt and the District does not seem to understand the seriousness of this issue. I had our regular meeting with my membership June 17th, all they asked was will there be layoffs, will we do furlough days, will we lose hours, and when will we know. I have no answer for them. Maybe the board can answer those questions tonight. When the management asked us to help, we did furlough days. Everyone from the eight hour person to the three hour person took days. Many of our members feel the furlough days they took were useless. They feel that $127,000 they sacrificed went toward paying attorney fees or some other consultant. As it stands now we need answers, not more meetings we need action, we also need to know that the Board and management are dealing with us in good faith. They need to demonstrate they have a handle on the situation and not the other way around. Our members have given me a number of suggestions in order to help. I will be glad to share them if asked. I also want the board to know what I have been telling management in all of the meetings I have been a part of, Please remember you are dealing with peoples lives, don’t let me come to work one day and find out you have laid off 100 of our members. Let us know what is happening and give us the truth and let us help in this process. In closing am asking the Board to pull resolution #08-09/70 until we get the information we have requested from management. The Board did not pull that resolution (the resolution was to give the Board the power to start layoffs if and when they felt it was necessary) nor did they give me any answers to our other concerns. One small victory, the consultant was not approved. In closing, I want you to have a great summer vacation and try not to worry about your jobs; your leadership is doing enough of that. As soon as we receive any information from the District we will let you know by mail. Please be sure the District has a valid mailing address on file. Herman Winslow Chapter President

California School Employees Association
2045 Lundy Avenue
San Jose, California 95131
(408) 473-1000 or (800) 632-2128

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