UESF End of Year Report
By the Special Education Joint Committee
Hello special educators! Thanks to the amazing work of the UESF bargaining team during the negotiations around Special Education, member leaders built up their capacity to enforce Article 29.11 titled “Special Education Committee.” The rank and file leaders from those negotiations continued to enforce the required monthly meeting and have now formalized a very important committee that collaborates with SFUSD to address “District-wide concerns.” The following is a report on their impactful work.
This year the Special Education Joint Committee was able to accomplish several goals while fighting to support our members from EED/TK-12. There are two main components of the Special Education Joint Committee. First, we held monthly meetings with our members to share information and learn of concerns at all of our sites. We were able to share suggestions on how to navigate your site union issues working in collaboration with the UBC and the Special Education Joint Committee.
From there we would meet with Regina Piper, Assistant Superintendent of Special Education, monthly to discuss issues happening in special education and find solutions to problems. We used the contract to make sure our members have their rights protected. Working with Regina Piper and her team we were able to ensure that UESF received the quarterly reports regarding our ratios for case managers and class size proportions to ensure that we are being as inclusive as possible. Using the quarterly reports and member reports, we were able to shift resources to schools as staff were hired to ensure the best possible service support we could manage while we fight to have the districts FCMAT representative, Elliot Duchon, move quicker to approve hiring for the many vacancies we have in special education, both certificated and classified. Additionally, we used the quarterly reports to ensure that any member over their ratio would receive the appropriate compensation for their increased caseloads that we won in our last bargaining session.
We also increased our Special Education Joint Committee team to ensure that all areas of special education were represented with Early Education Co-Chair Patricia Ross, Classified Co-Chair Michelle Schudel, Certificated Classroom Co-Chair Kyle Pate, Certificated Itinerant Support Co-Chair Tina Leung, and Chair Adan Luevano. Having so many team members representing content specialists, elementary educators, para educators, secondary educators, early education educators, After School Program educators, Speech Language Pathologists, and School Psychologists allowed our team to always be ready with relevant information regarding special education while we met with the district.
Next year we hope to build on what we have won and increase the support for our students. Thank you from your UESF Special Education Joint Committee!
