Anson Stevens-Bollen
Despite having approved a contract with an outside firm for special education services, Santa Fe Public Schools has backtracked and instead will use pay incentives to recruit its own staff for the program during the coming school year.
The school board voted in June to enter into a $1.5 million contract with Specialized Education Services after it had trouble finding teachers and other workers, but the local branch of the National Education Association union opposed that plan.
However, within just a few weeks of negotiating with the union, on July 21, the superintendent reversed the district’s course and instead set up stipends ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 per year for those willing to work for the special ed program—on top of the salary and benefits the positions already offer.
“We’re pleased that we were able to come to a compromise,” Grace Mayer, NEA-Santa Fe’s union president, tells SFR. “It’s never a good idea to outsource public education, ever. Especially to a for-profit entity.”
Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez reports all four of the vacant teaching positions in the special ed program have since been filled, as well as the one vacant social worker position. The district has yet to fill all eight educational assistant positions open, but Chavez says the district is actively recruiting and has a few workers lined up for the start of the school year.
“We want what is best for students. We want to ensure they are receiving a proper education; this can be in-house or through a contractor. At the end of the day, it’s about the kids in those classrooms,” he tells SFR.
Although the SFPS Board of Education unanimously approved the contract at its June 22 meeting and planned to locate a new program at the Aspen Community School, the contract had yet to be signed. At the time, Jeff Pinkerton, the school district’s executive director of Exceptional Student Services, said no one had applied to two-year-old job openings for the behavioral health jobs.
Mayer says the union was caught off guard by the board’s vote, noting, “We were a little surprised that the district wanted to move forward with this without really trying to see if we could negotiate an alternative.”
The board’s plan to outsource teaching positions would dilute the union’s collective bargaining unit that negotiates wage and working conditions, which includes all teachers and educational assistants, she says.
“It seemed like the school board was either unclear with that relationship and process or they were just not interested,” Mayer adds. “So, that’s why I stood up and I objected to what was happening.”
District officials and union members met to discuss pros, cons and costs, with the union suggesting a plan to ask current staff to take on the vacant positions in special ed, providing stipends between $10,000 to $20,000 as incentive.
Mayer says the union surveyed staff about the idea, and enough staff responded, resulting in the district pulling back from the contract.
“The whole intention behind this was to have our most experienced people, that have the commitment to the community and their students, fill these positions, and see if we can work with them to create a program that’s gonna be sustainable, long-term and have the impact on students’ achievement that we hope to see,” she says.
The yearly stipend for the four special education teachers will be $20,000. The first $10,000 to be paid in December, and the remaining in May. The social worker will receive a $15,000 yearly stipend, and educational assistants will receive a $10,000 yearly stipend.
The district now plans to establish three classrooms dedicated to special education at Sweeney Elementary, and one at Ortiz Middle School when school begins Aug. 15.
The union also advocated for the social worker to be hired specifically to work with special ed students, which Mayer says is a first for SFPS. Salaries, benefits, stipends, and costs to operate the special ed program are expected to fall near the proposed contract amount.
Chavez told lawmakers about the plan at a July 26 Legislative Education Study Committee meeting, noting, “I’m a true believer that if we have a happy workforce, if you have a workforce that know they’re cared about, vacancy rates of employees will go down and the quality of instruction will go up.”
