The San Ysidro School District successfully petitioned the California Public Employment Relations Board to appoint a mediator to help negotiate the disputed contract between the school district and the local teacher’s union.  Negotiations have been conducted for months without result, and the district asserts that unless a contract is agreed to soon, the next school year is in jeopardy.

The school district is near insolvency due to withdrawn funding from the state of California, according to the president of the district’s governing board, Jason M-B Wells.  The district has cut many of its other budgets as much as they believe possible, but the employee pay and benefits budgets cannot be set until the teacher’s union agrees to a new contract.  The delay in getting that contract in place has made the district desperate to get an agreement, and has directly resulted in the mediation request.

Despite the lack of a new contract, there have been positive signs in the negotiation.  The district is seeking an 8% cut in salaries in other compensation.  Initially, the union sought a 6% raise in compensation, but later reduced that demand to 1%.  However, the inability to bring those numbers any closer to each other has resulted in the approved request for a mediator’s intervention.  There is no statutory deadline for the contract talks to be concluded, which also puts pressure on the troubled school district.

Pressure on the union comes in the form of retroactive adjustments: If they agree to a 8% compensation reduction in the middle of the school year, as seems likely, paychecks will be reduced by a larger amount to make up for the months teachers received compensation under the prior contractual agreements.  The mediator will have to find middle ground for both parties.