City Hall, Cops Lock Horns
Citing a gap in relative bargaining positions worth $1.9 million a year, City Hall negotiators have declared an impasse with their counterparts in the Police Officers Association (POA) over contract talks. The stumbling block, according to city officials, is how much sworn officers should pay into their own retirements. Based on the city’s “bottom line” offer, city cops have to be paying 9 percent into their own retirement by the end of three years. For experienced officers, that represents a loss of take-home pay amounting to $9,600 a year. Traditionally, city cops have not had to pay anything into their retirement, but during the recession the POA agreed to make payments, albeit smaller. According to City Hall negotiators, the POA agreed to make such contributions if its members were compensated in the form of a pay hike. And that pay hike, they said, was on top of the 5 percent the union already demanded. Instead, city negotiators have offered what amounts to a very modest increase of 2.25 percent over the next three years, pointing out a starting cop makes $100,000 and a sergeant earns $180,000 in salary and benefits. Attorneys for the POA expressed disappointment with the city’s impasse declaration, noting that City Hall is doing quite well financially and that the union has suggested City Hall could reduce the amount it pays into its officers’ retirement funds without requiring the officers to make up the difference. Pensions have become a hot political issue, and the POA — once a dominant force in area politics — endorsed three losers in the last council election. Beyond that, councilmembers on both sides of the aisle have grown concerned that 50 cents out of every dollar paid to a sworn officer now goes to retirement and that within five years that amount is expected to jump to 62 cents. Now that impasse has been declared, the next step is for mediation. Should mediation fail, the POA can request a third-party fact-finding process. Only after that process is exhausted does the council have the option of imposing a contract upon the union, but then only for one year. Three years ago — in the depths of the recession — it appeared that a contract might well be imposed, and only then was an agreement — Nick Welsh hammered out.
were 244 Type I crimes — violent or serious; this June there were 201. Last July there were 35 aggravated assaults; this July there were 25. Despite the spike in high-profile stabbings, Sanchez reported that gang incidents likewise have dropped with only 21 and 22 gang-related incidents tabulated this June and July, respectively. Of gang violence during last week’s Fiesta, Sanchez said there was “little to none.” He noted that members of an out-of-town motorcycle gang got into a brawl with “some older previous gang members” but that police broke it up
before much damage could be inflicted, and no arrests were made. In the wake of her arrest for public intoxication, KEYT anchor Paula Lopez issued a statement through her employer: “I have been in professional medical treatment for the disease of alcoholism for a number of months. I have dealt with anxiety and depression for many years. Excessive self-medication is a fairly recent phenomenon for me. It has increased over time. cont’d page 12 I have had substantial
Stricter Sobriety Rules
Santa Barbara’s biggest homeless shelter, Casa Esperanza, hit another milestone this week in its new seismic shift toward imposing sobriety requirements on its residents. The new rules started April 1, when Casa announced that all residential participants in transitional programs had to stay off drugs and alcohol. This Thursday, Casa took it up another notch, requiring that any homeless people discharged from Cottage Hospital to any of the 10 beds Cottage reserves at Casa for recuperating patients must agree to remain clean and sober. By December 1 — when the shelter is operating at full capacity of 200 beds a night — anyone staying there will be expected to abide by such rules. This marks a major departure in policy and practice; for the past 14 years, Casa Esperanza has operated both as a one-stop shop offering a wide range of services designed to aid transition from the streets and as a de facto homeless warehouse that took all people regardless of their condition so long as their behavior was not too disruptive. Driving the change is a growing awareness that that these diverse functions cannot coexist fruitfully under one roof. The presence of people getting drunk and stoned makes it much harder for many people already on the edge to make their way off the streets. Also driving the policy change are the organizations that fund shelters throughout the country. They want programs that get more people off the streets faster; programs that don’t offer this don’t get funded. (Casa has had to borrow funds to provide the current level of services and that, said Casa director Mike Foley, is not economically sustainable. With the recession lifting, he said, there’s also been a shift away from homeless funding by many philanthropic donors.) Many in the nonprofit world worry what will become of the people turned away from the shelter during the dead of winter because of the new requirements. “The short and long answer is we don’t know,” said Foley. He estimated that only half the people served by the Casa have addiction issues, but if only one-quarter refuses to abide by the new rules, 20-40 people will be seeking shelter elsewhere. Taking up some of the slack will be the loose confederation of warming shelters operated out of churches throughout the county when it’s wet and cold. Foley added the new policy will not be enforced with a zero-tolerance rigidity. For those who slip, additional resources will be — Nick Welsh offered before they’re asked to leave.
PAU L WELLM AN
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education
All Cash, No Money
Funding Still in Question for a Pivotal School Year BUILT LIKE A BRICK SCHOOLHOUSE: Construction workers install permanent restrooms, funded by 2010 Bond Measure R, at Adelante Charter School.
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BY B R A N D O N FA S T M A N
hanges in the Santa Barbara Unified School District are continuing at a fast and furious pace, Superintendent David Cash told media at a back-toschool address on Monday. Among the district’s accomplishments over the past year, he listed the approval of a three-year strategic plan, a streamlined process for community use of school sites, implementation of 50 percent of the recommendations in a report on special education, an overhauled web page, and a bilingual state of the schools address. Speaking of facilities, construction is underway at campuses across the district. Projects include new play areas at Open Alternative School and an upgraded gymnasium at Santa Barbara High School, where almost everything but the walls have been replaced. Workers were ready to paint lines for basketball and volleyball courts last Thursday. Painting was also about to get underway at new parking and rec areas at Santa Barbara Junior High School; the school was built on a swamp, and the areas needed reinforcement. Maybe most importantly, new restrooms are being installed at Peabody Charter School, Harding University Partnership School, and Adelante Charter School. The district is also hoping to sell another $55 million worth of bonds within the month to raise funds for further construction. While showing off the $800,000 site work at Adelante, facilities manager David Hetyonk said the new bond money was much needed. “As a facilities person,” he said, “we’re always short of money.” He knows that because this year, the district completed an audit of its facilities via the consulting firm Telacu. What nobody is quite sure of, however, is how much money the district will receive from the state. This year, Governor Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula will be implemented. In concept, no districts should receive less money than they did during the 2012-2013 year. However, Santa Barbara Unified benefited from a onetime influx of $8 million mostly from the dissolution of redevelopment agencies that the state has not erased but subtracted from its baseline number. Business boss Meg Jetté was in Sacramento last week lobbying for the district. Cash said they are currently planning for a status quo budget.
No matter the money, he is charging ahead with new initiatives. The Restorative Justice pilot program at Santa Barbara Junior High School will be expanded to the other three junior high schools and Santa Barbara High School. Cash announced that a one-to-one iPad pilot program will be instituted at four campuses this year, but administration has not yet settled on which four. On top of all that, teachers will continue to learn the Common Core State Standards, which will introduce the most significant changes to classroom instruction since 1998. The purpose of the new standards is to emphasize connections between and continuity within subject areas. They also focus on depth over breadth. California schools have two years to implement the new standards, during which Cash said his teachers will divide that task into four quarters: Learning the standards, assessing instructional materials, improving instruction, and adding technology to “learning environments.” Meanwhile, Cash and his lieutenants are continuing to focus on issues of equity throughout the district. There is still a pervasive achievement gap between “underprivileged Hispanic students” and “privileged white students,” said Cash, a significant portion of which can be blamed on “systemic barriers.” That includes disproportionate suspension rates. So far the district has tried to include more texts that reflect the demographics of its students, made an effort to reclassify more English learners as English proficient, and begun the discussion about how to increase the participation of English learners in Gifted and Talented courses. “We’ve nibbled around the edges,” said Cash, but some hard scrutiny is in order, he suggested. While doing all of this, teachers also face a major shakeup in their internal organization, a detail Cash did not include in his address. The new union contract does away with department chairs. In their stead, each department will have multiple Professional Learning Community (PLC) leaders, who will facilitate weekly sessions during which teachers of the same courses share data and set goals. The purpose of PLCs is to help teachers collaborate and make the level of their instruction more uniform. Leaders will ■ be paid a stipend. august 8, 2013
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