Public Education Matters

Various student voices 0:08
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.

Scott DiMauro 0:15
This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:26
Welcome back to Public Education Matters. I'm your host, Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association's nearly 120,000 members across the state. We know not all of these public school educators followed the same tidy little path into the classroom. There are a lot of second career educators serving Ohio students, bringing their knowledge, experience and expertise from their previous careers into the classroom now to provide the best education possible for our kids. That's especially true in Ohio's growing career tech sector. The problem is, it can be really hard to make this an attractive, sustainable career so we can get and keep the best people to be career tech educators, if you don't follow the quote, unquote, traditional path of studying education in college and then maybe getting an advanced degree or two as well salary schedules in most collective bargain agreements for educators reward that traditional path with educators moving up columns based on their higher education degrees, and that can leave others, especially great career tech educators who earned their chops in private industry behind the Greene County Career Center Education Association just made a huge stride toward changing that after bargaining a new kind of salary schedule for their members, which they believe is the first of its kind in the state, it moves career tech educators over columns on the salary schedule based on longevity, giving them a lot greater parity with their academic counterparts. The president of the local let us know about this really big contract development as a follow up to a conversation I had earlier with him this year for an episode about the growing demand for career tech education in Ohio, I urge you to go back and listen to that episode. It's season five, Episode 17. If you haven't already heard it, I'll say it really opened my eyes, at least, about what career tech education in Ohio looks like, and why it is so valuable for our students and for our state. Before you listen to that, though, listen to this, the conversation we had in mid April about the big bargaining wins that are helping to make sure career tech educators feel valued like they should.

P.R. Frank 2:44
My name is P.R. Frank. I am a 31 year teacher. I am a unique career tech educator because I came from teaching to Career Tech rather than the industry to Career Tech. But the reason I was able to do that is because I have a small business doing media production. So this is, this is what I teach. And it was really nice moving from kind of one sector of education to the other at about 15 years in.

Doug Picard 3:19
My name is Doug Picard. I am a 21 year Air Force retiree turned career tech educator. This is year six of career tech ed. I teach engineering and manufacturing at the Greene County Career Center, and I'm also our local president.

Katie Olmsted 3:38
And as the local president, you have a lot to celebrate, along with your members right now. What just happened with your contract?

Doug Picard 3:47
So the the Greene County Career Center Education Association and the the school board, we just ratified a three year contract, and within that contract we, we got some really big wins in equity for our career tech educators and a lot of other things that we have not seen in the state of Ohio.

Katie Olmsted 4:11
Let's talk about that. What, what does that look like? These wins?

P.R. Frank 4:16
Yeah, so I really love it. You know, as as an educator, you know, I, I didn't come from the industry. First, I came from education. And so I have, you know, a master's degree in education. Well, many people that come to a career tech school to teach Career Technology Education came from a trade, you know, they don't necessarily even have a bachelor's degree in that case. And so when you talk about salary schedules, they're usually stuck at a place that is going to be an increasingly widening gap unless they pursue higher education, which really isn't to their benefit, because they're more interested in making sure they're up on the certifications that they're trying to teach their students. But our contract allows for some different classes of career tech educators so that they can move up that salary schedule at a very competitive rate compared to regular ed teachers that are here who may have a bachelor's degree or master's or beyond.

Doug Picard 5:14
Like PR said, we have a lot of very well qualified career tech ed folks coming in with, with high school diplomas and immense industry experience. And so what we did was I took some inspiration from a we had a career, to an OEA Career Tech Summit back in October. And I took some inspiration from Mahoning Valley CTC, and kind of built on what they had, and they had a longevity system built into their salary columns. And so in addition to adding a fifth column, which was another recommendation from the OEA Bargaining Boot Camp, which everybody should be attending, no matter how many times you bargain, there's always good information there, we added a fifth column. Did not add any steps, and within those columns, we did not rename them. We just added CTE categories to each column so everybody in CTE comes in at BA BS with a high school diploma, if you have a higher degree, then you will come in at a further column. So the columns go based on degrees or longevity, but there are a lot of people that have just a high school diploma and they are not going to pursue a master's plus 30 in, in selected career fields, some for engineering, vet tech, maybe nursing, the the education comes with the career, but in a lot of them, they don't. And also, for what we're teaching our students, we're teaching them that you can have a career, and you can have just as much, just as much success as somebody who has pursued education. And we want to espouse those values as an association to our students and but it's really hard to when your teachers don't see that. They don't see themselves being treated like that based on the salary schedule. So that's what we did, is we added longevity. So to advance to the highest three, the Masters, it is 10 and 15 and 20 years of longevity, along with demonstrated professional growth in our industrial area.

Katie Olmsted 7:29
When you first sat down to be like, I think we can do this, when you were talking to your own team about it, what was the reaction? As far as we know, this is the only place in the state that is like this. And then when you brought that to the negotiations table and you said, Hey, I think we can do this, what was the reaction there?

Doug Picard 7:48
The bargaining team, I was the only CTE on the bargaining team. A close second is we have satellite educators and satellite educators, they kind of ride the fence of CTE and academics and so it we wanted to make sure that we weren't doing this at the expense of the entire bargaining unit, because bargaining is give and take, but we felt that we could get it done because we had some real justification, and we also have the challenge of keeping and retaining CTE folks, the on the board side of the discussion, we did not feel very much resistance to it, because we had our information grounded in data, and we were also working on a more equity based pay scale that was very targeted in and it lined up with the career centers vision and values.

Katie Olmsted 8:48
P.R. what does this mean for your life?

P.R. Frank 8:49
Yeah. So you know, when I saw this, this new salary schedule come across, you know, really benefiting the advancement, in terms of financial advancement, of my CTE colleagues, I was really excited, because I think what it means is we are going to attract some of the best people, right if, if they're really out there, doing their leg work, doing their research, they're going to see this salary schedule or hear about it, and know that they're going to be taken care of, and they they're not going to be tempted to dive back out into industry after having a great experience, you know, teaching the the youth that are going to grow that industry, they're going to stay here. It's a great organization and a great facility, and now with this longevity possibility and being able to, you know, earn a competitive salary before they retire, I think it's really attractive, so I don't, I think it's going to keep people here, and we're not going to constantly go through the revolving door of teachers that we have been, you know, in the whole history of the career center and and I think it's going to want to it's going to make people want to stay, like I said, and it's also going to attract some of the best talent. So very excited about that as, as a possibility for this.

Katie Olmsted 10:14
And at the end of the day, when we have the very best talent, and we have them growing and continuing to excel at their own craft. Year after year, it's our students who benefit the most. They have both somebody who has all of that industry expertise and the experience in the classroom, and when we can show that this is a worthy investment, I think that is truly just, like, an amazing win for everyone.

P.R. Frank 10:43
Yeah, and that's what I was getting that, you know, when we get a teacher from the industry that comes in here, and they're great, but then they, they're like, hey, you know, this is cool, and I'm very successful with these kids. And the kids love that instructor, but then that instructors like, look, at the end of the day, I got to make more money. And they leave and, and that turnover hurts the kids, you know, they don't feel like they have the longevity of a teacher that sticks with them and, and they have to learn a new teacher, the new teachers learning the how it works, and it really slows down the progress of where those kids could be going. So I really look forward to, you know, just how, how we can catapult our students even further than they already are. We have good reputation as it is, but I think it's really going to catapult our ability to put people out there in the field that employers can trust.

Doug Picard 11:36
And I think another thing to add on to that, as well as us as career tech educators, we have our students for five plus hours per day like we we each have a group of juniors for two and a half hours in the morning, and in a group of seniors two and a half hours in the afternoon. And in in that kind of environment, you're developing a lot different kind of relationship than you are in a class that is 40 minutes at the bell, 40 minutes at the bell, we really get to know our kids, and they they confide a lot in us. They believe in us. They, it's just a different kind of relationship out there. And when we have better instructors that stick around for a lot longer, it really helps the students out a lot more.

Katie Olmsted 12:23
And that's what I'm hearing here. Is it, everyone wants to stay, but you have to make it an attractive, sustainable career, and what you're doing with the salary schedule goes a really long way toward that. We're talking not an insignificant amount of money either. I mean, do you have some success stories you can lift up for me?

Doug Picard 12:41
I've got two instructors off the top of my head. They have been in the district for about over 20 years, and they have been on the very first column ever since they started. And so they are maxed out our we have 22 steps in our in our salary schedule, and they are moving over four columns. They are maxing out, along with a lot of other instructors, they are moving all the way over to the far right in the next contract year. And so the two of them I know at the top of my head are making an increased amount of about $15,000 each over the next contract year. And one of them, I think, might be reevaluating retirement plans. But then there, there are a lot that that are moving from our second column to the third column, which is the the, the first real longevity column, and that's, that's probably the most significant pay bump out of all of them, and there are a lot that are experiencing that, and they, you know, hopefully they're going to make the decision to stick around for the 15 and 20 year marks. So all in all, with the entire migration of CTE, plus the migration of moving folks to our fifth column. All in all, we're putting about $250,000 immediately into our members and our entire bargaining units pockets.

Katie Olmsted 14:13
When you brought this contract to your members and said, Hey, here's what you would be making if we are going to ratify this. What was the reaction?

P.R. Frank 14:23
I was really pleased, not just from a personal standpoint, but, you know, like looking at my colleagues. I was, you know, because, you know, I work with a lot of career tech educators who don't have advanced degrees, and just just celebrating in the opportunities for them to, you know, sort of have the financial reward that they really deserve. You know, they're building our industry here in Ohio and beyond by being great educators to these kids and just to have them be able. To benefit from this negotiation. I don't know. It just made me happy to really work here. I still already was happy to work here, but made me really excited for the future of it.

Katie Olmsted 15:11
And I think it says something about the future of career tech education in Ohio, that there is this recognition that not just one path leads to the classroom, not just one person, one type of person is the best person to help teach our students these skills. Do you see other career techs? Well, other other local I guess, doesn't have to just be the Career Tech ones. But do you see others adopting this style of pay schedule?

Doug Picard 15:40
I would, I would hope so. I don't think that this should be just strictly on CTE. I think there's a lot of value in longevity in an organization. There's there. There's a lot of value in that, knowing how to navigate, knowing the local communities, culture and values, and not having a revolving door of teachers, having, having them, giving them a reason to be committed to a district. And I would hope that the Career Center can be the benchmark for, at least for starting out, for for CTE, I would love to, you know, help others and get them to craft language. Because we, we're pioneers in this we crafted this language from scratch. And, you know, there's inspiration from here and there, but really the language it came from, it came from our members, wishes and desires. We a couple other little nuggets that we also have in there for CTE is we finally have a mentor. So the academic side of the house has the rest of mentors, and CTE was lacking, and we had a lot of brand new instructors making very silly mistakes and also being really frustrated with all of the things that they didn't know. And it's really hard to rely on your neighbor teachers when they're in the weeds, doing everything too. And so we now have a dedicated mentor just for those folks, for the CTE folks, and we also were able to get reimbursement for personal protective equipment for the the more industrial labs, which mirrors industry. There's not a lot of industries out there that are going to make you buy your own gloves and welding jackets and steel toe boots and safety glasses and things like that.

P.R. Frank 17:32
Yeah, you know, following on what Doug said there. You know, the CTE mentor position is very important, because think about if you're just coming in and you're doing the the workshops at the beginning of the year, and the professional development, it's aimed toward teachers who know how to run a classroom and, and know how to grade things and know how to generate evaluations. A lot of CTE teachers may not be up on that, and they're just sort of lost for you know how to run a classroom. They know how to run the machinery and the tools and teach all that. You know, that's why they got into it. But they really need somebody to help usher them into this crazy process that comes along with teaching, which is not just put it down when you leave the door. You know there's a lot that you do as a teacher in the evening and weekends.

Katie Olmsted 18:27
And the salary schedule wins, these contract wins, really demonstrate the value that's being placed on somebody who does do both, who learns to be a great teacher, who comes in with this experience and can teach these skills. And it demonstrates the value of career tech education in Ohio.

Doug Picard 18:44
Speaking of demonstrating value, one other thing I almost forgot, career tech coming straight off the street from industry. We're also required to get the Ohio Department of Education Workforce licensure. Previously in our district, we were expecting new folks like myself to get this license, and our district has a very generous 60% tuition reimbursement, but that still leaves 40% in the hole that and we also had to pay 100% of it up front and then wait for the class to be over 12 weeks later for a lot of our folks that were brand new, this is is a non insignificant amount of their salary. And so what we did, we also bargain that for required certification licensure. Classes like this, our district now pays 100% of that tuition, and they pay it up front to the college so the member does not see a financial hit in their wallet, as long as they make the grade and pass the class.

Katie Olmsted 19:52
Really just showing what can be accomplished when you look at the challenges that you have and think about ways. That you can bargain fixes to that. I really hope that others are going to follow your lead, because this is truly an amazing success story.

Doug Picard 20:08
I would love to, you know, have like, a breakout session at, like a bargaining boot camp or something, just to talk to folks, you know, but the first thing is having to ask is, I think there's kind of a paradigm in bargaining where a lot of folks go in, they're like, percent on the base year 1, 2, 3, you know, and then it's just very minor changes to, you know, back and forth. And then you call it a contract, and it's just kind of boring, and there's a lot of, a lot of goodness that can be had if, if you've got ideas and you have supportive members that appreciate how you think and provide those inputs.

Katie Olmsted 20:48
And I think that's honestly one of the biggest success stories about all of this, is that you do have members who are, you know, the CTE instructors, who are directly going to benefit from moving up, but it's not like you're leaving the academic instructors behind here. Everybody wins.

Doug Picard 21:02
Yes, yes, we did 11. I believe it's 11 and a quarter over the three years. And, you know, I'm not going to say there wasn't any grumbling from the, the academic side. That is that, that's the nature of bargaining is, you know, everybody's everybody's going to leave wanting more, you know, and that's just how it goes. But yes, we we ensured that we still got a very good pay raise for everybody. We benefited CCP instructors, so they get 100% reimbursement as well. We did do a lot of, you know, standard things in there that benefit all on the in the entire bargaining unit. But this one did not come at the expense of everybody else.

P.R. Frank 21:52
You know. I think when you, when you start out a conversation with we want to make our organization better, people start to listen.

Katie Olmsted 21:58
Thank you both so much for your time and for helping us understand what can be accomplished

P.R. Frank & Doug Picard 22:04
Our pleasure. Thank you very much for talking to us.

Katie Olmsted 22:09
Any other local leaders who want to see what they can do for their own members like this are encouraged to take a look at the Greene County Career Center, Education Association, collective bargaining agreement and salary schedule for themselves. Remember, you can always find CBAS on Ohio's Cerb website, but Doug Picard also says he's happy to share it with you directly and let you pick his brain about the details. His contact info is in the show notes for this episode. In next week's episode, we dig into some of the unique issues facing local associations that work with county boards of developmental disabilities and how one local association emerged from its recent bargaining crisis stronger than ever. New episodes of this podcast continue to drop every Thursday this school year, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai