Following 10 months of negotiating, the district declared impasse on March 23, according to Holley Luia, president of Chapter 638 of the California School Employees Association.
District Superintendent Dave McQueen confirmed that the district was at impasse.
“We're starting the process,” he said.
However, McQueen said he did not want to get into the specifics of what hung up the negotiations, noting that a mediator will be getting involved.
“I've never done it, so it's a whole new experience to me,” he said.
Luia, however, offered details of how negotiations shut down, saying that the district declared impasse after the classified employees wouldn't offer a counter proposal to the district's most recent officer.
She said the situation is like “starting from square one again.”
Even so, Luia said the district's classified employees have not closed talks and would welcome another offer from the district.
According to Luia, classified employees traditionally get “the sharp end of the stick.”
They're seen as expendable when times get tough, and she said they've been asked to accept much more stringent terms than other bargaining units, including teachers and administration.
Most recently, the district has asked them to cap health benefits at $10,000 annually, down from the current $17,700 cap for classified, which is already below the cap of $19,000 that teachers and administrators receive.
That $10,000 health benefits cap proposal was part of the district offer the union rejected last month, Luia said.
The classified employees also had entered the school year willing to consider furlough days and a 2-percent rollback in pay, which Luia said other bargaining units wouldn't discuss.
As a result, “We're the ones getting all the layoffs,” she said.
Classified employees have been hit particularly hard by layoffs in recent years, she said.
Luia said classified employees – which includes support staff such as custodians, librarians and secretaries, among other job descriptions – had numbered over 100 just a few years ago. But in the 2007-08 school year, they saw a loss of 45 positions, leaving them now at 69 classified employees countywide.
Last year, classified was left alone, with no layoffs. “We were thrilled,” she said, adding, “We're doing double jobs here and we're all stressed out.”
Due to several retirements, Kelseyville Unified was able to avoid teacher layoffs this year. But with the district now in “qualified” status with the state due to concerns it may not meet its financial obligations in the coming two school years, the district board approved a financial recovery plan last month that approved cutting classified positions totaling 19 full-time jobs, McQueen said.
McQueen said the board passed a resolution on Tuesday accepting those layoffs.
“Everything that we're doing is part of the fiscal recovery plan,” McQueen said.
He added that the impasse doesn't affect the district's ability to go forward with classified layoffs.
Luia said the layoffs will result in only one secretary at Rivera Elementary School, where there are 274 children. Likewise, Kelseyville Elementary, which has 500 children attending, also will have to do with one secretary. She said custodial staff suffers from similarly slim ratios of employees to students.
Luia, a secretary at Kelseyville High School, added, “I'm one of the ones slated to be laid off.”
She said the classified union's entire local executive board is on that layoff list.
The classified union is faulting the district for using its dwindling funds to pay an attorney to represent them through mediation and fact-finding rather than settling with the classified employees, “who provide valuable service to students and campuses.”
With the governor calling a halt to budget negotiations last month, and with no special June election likely to extend some taxes that would benefit schools, the district is going to have to cut $2.3 million from its budget, rather than $1.6 million, said McQueen.
“We've got to go with the worst case scenario,” he said.
The school district board on Tuesday also voted to continue discussing the possible sale of the Gard Street School site to the county, McQueen said.
Earlier that day, the Board of Supervisors voted to also continue its exploration of purchasing the 7.44-acre property – appraised at $990,000 – for use as a campus for several county departments, as Lake County News has reported.
Luia said the sale could help save district jobs.
The possibility of selling the property arose last fall out of a configurations discussion, but McQueen cautioned that, currently, “It's just in the talking stage.”
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
