Teachers vote to retain current schedule
April 14, 2015
Seventy-six Wenatchee High School teachers voted yesterday to retain the current modified block daily schedule for the 2015-16 school year.
The current schedule received votes that represented 69.7 percent of the faculty, which is enough sustain the contract waiver, Wenatchee Education Association President Kris Cameron wrote in an email to staff last night. A 60 percent majority was required to pass.
Ten teachers voted for Principal Bob Celebrezze’s proposed schedule for next year, which was announced on March 25. Three teachers abstained.
Eighty-nine of WHS’s 109 certificated staff members participated in the vote.
“As you can see, there is still a major difference of opinion around what schedule WHS should have,” Cameron said in her email. “So I will reiterate my request that you be kind to one another and respect each others’ opinions.”
A waiver is required to continue with the current schedule, as it doesn’t meet the collective bargaining agreement’s requirement that teachers receive a daily preparation period. Teachers only receive that prep period four times per week under the current schedule.
In February, teachers voted to regain their daily prep period. Celebrezze was directed by Superintendent Brian Flones to create a new schedule that allows for that daily period. Celebrezze set forth that schedule March 25, and teachers expressed major concerns over it.
Enough concern, in fact, that Cameron went to Flones and Celebrezze, asking for another vote. Flones offered the current schedule or next year’s proposal. “If [the schedule] doesn’t violate the contract, there’s no requirement that staff votes on it,” Flones told The Apple Leaf last week.
Some teachers wanted to return to the traditional, six-period-per-day schedule, but Flones said that would be a step backwards, considering the looming requirements for CORE 24. Forty-four teachers did, however, sign a petition to ask him or the Wenatchee School Board to reconsider his decision, but that was not enough to carry the request forward, Cameron said.
