We wanted to share some information regarding Safety Committees and Overage Claims.
Understanding COVID-Related Safety at Your School
Every school shall have a Safety Committee, with 1-2 PAT members appointed by members at your school.
- The safety committee will tour the building to ensure that all of the provisions on safety and health protections in the PAT-PPS MOU on returning to hybrid instruction are in place. The initial walk through for K-5 should have been done by March 19, 2021. Middle and High School Safety Committees should complete their walkthroughs prior to hybrid starting on April 19, 2021.
- Safety Committees should use the Building Environment Checklist for these tours, and to make sure all of the required supports are established in buildings.
- Make sure you know who is on your school’s safety committee. After the walkthrough, your safety committee members should inform your staff what the outcome was of the evaluation, and what steps were taken to address any issues.
Similarly, all in-person educators should use the Daily Classroom/Workspace Checklist everyday to ensure that they are working in a space that meets all of the safety requirements.
If the requirements are not met, this is the protocol:
- Notify your administrator/principal and building rep. Ask administrator for a timeline for resolution.
- If not resolved right away, contact your custodian.
- Contact [email protected]
- If safety concerns are still not met, the space should not be used for instruction.
MOU Section I.f. - “After student instruction begins, if a room does not meet the agreed upon safety protocol and changes cannot be made within a reasonable amount of time, the room will not be used for in-person instruction until safety conditions are met.”
Please then inform your building rep and your principal that you need a new space for instruction.
If, after following the steps above, your administrator is unable or unwilling to adhere to the MOU, please contact your UniServ Consultant and Area Superintendent.
If you have questions about these protocols, please come to the Advocacy Cadre Zoom meeting, Monday, April 5 at 5:00 pm, to go over this protocol and get your questions answered. You can also email questions or concerns to the Cadre at [email protected].
You can find the MOU, Safety Checklists, and more resources on our website.
Overage Payments for Second Semester
Article 8 in the 2019-2020 PAT Agreement has language that defines workload “thresholds” for class-size, teaching load, caseload, and the number of unique course preparations. PPS is required by this contract language to pay educators whose workload exceeds those thresholds that were reviewed and calculated by PPS between February 16 and March 2, 2021.
Staff receiving stipends should have received a separate check on the March payday. The type of stipend will be reflected on the check as “Class Overload Stipend” and “Over 3 Prep Stipend.”
If you did not receive the pay you anticipated, please submit those questions and any documentation to PPS immediately and a PPS HR representative will review your information and respond about whether or not they will make any corrections.
Overage for Educators working under a “4x4” Schedule in High Schools
With respect to overage payment for educators that work in high schools doing a temporary 4x4 schedule, we have major disagreements with the District’s implementation of our contract language.
While PPS believes the language in the CBA is based on case-loads and unique preparation numbers per-semester, PAT believes that the overages numbers in the contract are directly linked to year-long courses.
It is our belief that high school educators working under a 4x4 schedule may not have been paid the proper overage payments if overage payments were not based on 160-student per year threshold. Further, we believe the threshold of “3 unique preparations” applies to the number of preparations over the course of the year.
PAT already has an “overage” grievance filed last year regarding seven different types of overage violations. One of the PAT positions is that the District failed to pro-rate student overage numbers by the number of courses an educator teaches. That grievance is currently in settlement talks with a state mediator. In addition, PAT filed a new grievance to correct the overages we believe resulted from the 4x4 schedule.
For now, please fill out the PPS form if you believe you are owed overage payments that you did not receive.