- November 23, 2024
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Elisabeth Dias became the president of the Flagler County Educators Association last year, taking over for longtime president Katie Hansen.
Brun Hudson is in his third term as president of the Flagler Educational Support Professionals Association.
But they are not only union leaders. Dias is a full-time teacher at Matanzas High School, and Hudson is a technology support specialist for the school district. So they understand the difficulties that teachers and support staff face. And besides negotiating with the district on new contracts, they also have new challenges to deal with every year.
They recently spoke to the Observer about the new contracts the School Board approved this month, Senate Bill 256, paraprofessionals' safety and other issues.
Elisabeth, what led you to become the FCEA president?
DIAS: I've been in the district, this is going on year 10. I've taught middle school science, the agriculture program, at Indian Trails, and now I’m teaching biology at Matanzas. My involvement in the union came from my background with my parents. They’re immigrants from Portugal and always had a strong union following, so, “You need to join your union or else.” For job protection. So I really started becoming involved when I was teaching side by side with Katie Hansen. She’s definitely a mentor of mine. She's led the way in my involvement. Eventually I became the vice president. And then when she became an administrator, I took over her position as president."
Brun, how did you wind up leading the support union?
HUDSON: The previous union president was Roxy Deluca. She brought me along. We need a building rep at (Flagler Palm Coast), so I became the building rep FPC in 2011 or 12. After about a year, she said we need somebody on bargaining. "Do you want to learn?" I said, "sure, I’ll come and watch and observe." So I get there, and she's like, "Oh, no, you're not sitting in the gallery, you're sitting at the table. You're on the bargaining team. You're going to argue." So I sat down and that was the first time I got a taste of collective bargaining. And it wasn't about six months or so later, she said, "by the way, we need a vice president." And I was like, OK, I'll run, and I ran unopposed and became the vice president. And it wasn't more than maybe six months to a year after that, that Roxy was like, "oh by the way I entered DROP. I'm retiring. So you're going to be the new president." And I became president. It was like a domino effect — I gotcha.
What are some highlights of the new contracts?
DIAS: Last year, we were in full book negotiations, where we went through the entire contract and changed all the articles of the contract. This year, we were able to open two articles of the contract for salaries and insurance. We highlighted just changing the contract to make sure that it was beneficial to all teachers, clarifying some language that we had addressed in our full book year and just focusing on what's the betterment for the workforce for teachers.
Unlike some districts and their unions, Flagler Schools and the unions seem to have an amicable relationship.
DIAS: It's very collaborative. You start every meeting with, “Tell me something good,” where we go around the table and share good news that has happened throughout the day, throughout our week. If there's a point where, "This is what our proposal is, this is what the district's proposal is," let's come together to make it make sense for both sides. I brag on the proceedings that we have in Flagler County. It really is a good environment. In bargaining, it can become very contentious. But we work through it and know that it is not you and I against each other, it is you and I working towards the solution. Katie Hansen did an amazing job of building that relationship. And I was just able to piggyback on that and really work to continue those positive relationships.
Senate Bill 256 has made it more difficult to maintain union members. Has it also affected contract negotiations?
DIAS: We changed some language in the contract. With the passing of Senate Bill 256, it has limited our ability to get records for our potential members. So one of the changes was to ask the district to provide the public records of our members and potential members so that we could send that off to PERC (the Public Employee Relations Commission). That is the way we maintain our certification. And without accurate records from the district, we wouldn't be able submit what our potential membership number was to maintain our certification.
Teacher shortages have been a problem nationwide. Why are teachers leaving the profession?
DIAS: I think Flagler is a little more lucky than other districts. We have 7,000 teacher vacancies in Florida. So it does affect all of us where young people are not going into the teaching profession anymore. So, I think that is an opportunity for us to pair up with some of the universities and really capture those that could be coming to Flagler. And Flagler is a little bit more well staffed than other districts. But we do have some classrooms that we need a full-time teacher in.
What were some of the highlights of the recent FESPA contract?
HUDSON: I would say the MOU for bonus money is definitely a highlight. We were able to convince the district to reallocate some ESSER grant funds, which is federal grant money, to allow for some bonuses for all support and teachers. But the other highlight was the ESE language that we changed for our paras. It's targeted towards supplemental pay for our paras that do one-on-one, or in self-contained classrooms. So they're going to get a supplement to their salary of $500 per semester if they elect to take on those extra responsibilities as an ESE para. That's $1,000 bump with their salary, which, unlike a bonus, reflects an FRS (investment plan) which is their retirement. So it was a big, big bump for our paras, which has been a shortage area for the school district. I think we started the school year with over 40 vacancies, and that's dwindled.
In light of the well-publicized attack on a paraprofessional by an ESE student, has the union been looking for some safeguards against a future incident from occurring?
HUDSON: When the incident happened, there was some fear and some doubt. The district's done really well about offering trainings, and we've come in with our (Florida Education Association) trainers and as officers we've come in and tried to do some extra trainings to get the people that are working with these kids to have better deescalation. And the district has done a really good job of backing their staff on that. I think in the beginning some of the statements that were made were on the weaker side, but once the investigation got moving, the paras felt that the district was behind them. It was one of those events that kind of was outside of the control the district, I think.
DIAS: I think it highlights an unfortunate reality that we face that there are students that pose a safety risk to both teachers and support staff, that we need to be fully trained on how to deescalate and how to handle situations like that, and that the district backs us 100% in any situation like that. We did see that in meeting with our leadership at the time. We did feel a sense of urgency that they were taking their proper steps to ensure that this didn't happen again. And we can’t ensure it, but to put those safeguards in place.
With our current legislation being against teacher unions and support staff unions, I think we do feel targeted. But we are going to maintain our certification, whether it's through the 60% membership threshold or by other routes to safeguard our certification." — ELISABETH DIAS
What are some of the specific challenges that Senate Bill 256 poses?
DIAS: I think its intended purpose is to distract us from the union goals that are supporting our members. And it is the idea that we are so deep into the clerical work of the union that we shift our focus from the activism to the clerical work of maintaining membership, to gathering our documents to be able to send to PERC, so that we shy away from activism, which is doing what's best for our teachers, doing what's best for our students. We don't need to be in the situation. We are strong and we're going to maintain our certification. This is just another hurdle that we're going to jump and come back stronger because of it.
So has maintaining certification become touchy?
DIAS: It’s always touchy. With our current legislation being against teacher unions and support staff unions, I think we do feel targeted. But we are going to maintain our certification, whether it's through the 60% membership threshold or by other routes to safeguard our certification.
So you need to be at 60% membership. Where are you now?
DIAS: We’re currently at 47% but increasing our membership daily. We have 430 members and we have 915 potentials. But we will maintain our certification through an election process in which at least 30% of the entire bargaining unit has to elect that they have interest in maintaining FCEA or FESPA as their bargaining representative. A ballot goes out to every instructional staff member where they vote. And at least 50% plus one has to show that they have interest in keeping our union.
Is FESPA in a similar situation?
HUDSON: Our situation is a little bit different. Our permanent renewal doesn't happen until March of next year. So we have more time to build membership. To get to 60% we need 498 members and we're currently at 324. We lost 106 members because Senate Bill 256 also outlaws payroll deduction for union dues. People have their choice to pay union dues, and that choice has now been taken from them because there were too many people I guess that wanted to pay their union dues, so the state decided to target that section and say we're just going to outlaw payroll deduction. So now, you figure out how to pay your union dues.
DIAS: So every member is dropped essentially. They have to reelect and rejoin. So now we have an electronic funds transfer. We don't see any members’ financial information. It's just a method of paying your dues on time.
Do teachers feel they are under more pressure from parents now than in past years?
DIAS: I think the workload in general has increased parent involvement. We always want parents to be involved, but there is a lot of pressure from parents because of those high stakes tests and graduation requirements that this is the threshold that we have to maintain. And there is some onus on the parent and on the child, but a lot of that onus falls on the teacher of why aren’t we getting students to achieve, and what do we do to better our test scores. And we shouldn't be teaching to the test. We teach to the individual student. So knowing that we want to be holistic teachers and not just teach to the test.
HUDSON: On the flip side of that, as the pressure on the teachers rise, the pressure on the staff that supports them rise, because you've got attendance clerks and you've got secretaries. The parents come in and they're fired up, so they lay into the support staff. Then they want to lay into the teacher. The other flip side of things is the bus drivers. Theytake a lot of heat from the parents and when they're angry at the bus drivers, who do they take it out on? They come to the school and they take it out on the teacher. So it's kind of a symbiotic relationship in that if a parent gets upset and puts pressure on one classification of worker in the school district, it does bleed over. I just think that teachers do take the brunt of it.
DIAS: We’re at the forefront of parent contact. We're going to make contact with our parents to ensure that they're well communicated with, but we can't do it without our support staff, and it is a united front.
