Modesto City Schools board passes school-year calendar

Modesto City Schools Board unanimously passed a 2015-16 calendar MOnday night. The schedule was delayed by contract wording ironed out in a deal with the district's support staff union. The year will include a 3-week break starting Dec 21 with a traditional spring break the week after Easter. The school year ends May 25, 2016.

The district also reached a handshake deal with its support staff’s union for a 4 percent hike. A vote on whether to accept the agreement will go before the union’s membership Wednesday.

The deal includes the pay hike and a settled calendar that keeps spring break following Easter, said Aaron Castro, CSEA Modesto chapter president. California School Employees Association members include nonteaching employees like school secretaries, classroom aides, custodians and bus drivers.

At last report, the district had not settled with its teachers. The Modesto Teachers Association said in July that progress was unusually slow in negotiations. The teachers initially asked for a 9 percent raise, and the district responded with a raise of less than 2 percent. Both sides said there had been some movement to close the gap but declined to give numbers.

Modesto City Schools principals and midlevel administrators are represented by a managers group, which is not a union. Top administrators have individual contracts, which have included raises of up to 7.3 percent for this year.

The CSEA deal does not involve the managers’ group or teachers union, but all tend to settle in similar ranges for year-to-year salary bumps.

The calendar has been an issue this year, with a month-to-month schedule being approved by the board of trustees until the union deals were done. The CSEA contract has settled the issue, Castro said.

“Spring break this school year will follow the past practice of being after good Friday,” Castro said Monday afternoon. That timing is traditional for all Stanislaus County public schools, lining up Modesto’s calendar with the six elementary districts that feed into Modesto City high schools.

The calendar holdup for 2014-15 came down to differences between contractual wording on Good Friday, both unions’ leaders have said. The CSEA contract called for employees to have “the Friday before spring break” off, while the teachers’ contract specified a flexible date. Both avoided any religious reference, but both were understood to apply to the Friday before Easter, when many churches hold special services.

A proposal by the teachers’ union early in negotiations to unlink the school calendar from swings of the Easter holiday caused the hubbub this year, even though the discussion was tabled, MTA President Doug Burton said earlier. Teachers have agreed to the district’s traditional calendar under a deal separated from other contract negotiations, he said.

This story was originally published August 17, 2015 at 1:58 PM with the headline "Modesto City Schools board passes school-year calendar."