What’s at stake?
The PERB ruling is a significant win for pro-union teachers in Clovis Unified, the largest district in California without a teachers union.
A decision handed down by the state’s top authority on public employees’ rights Monday appears to be the final nail in the coffin for Clovis Unified’s Faculty Senate.
The Public Employment Relations Board’s ruling on Oct. 14 upheld an earlier decision from June, calling for the Faculty Senate – which critics equate to a company union – to disestablish.
The June decision also ordered the Clovis Unified superintendent to record a video outlining the ways in which the district and Faculty Senate had broken the law and share the recording at staff meetings on every campus.
Monday’s ruling upheld that order as well, in spite of a request Clovis Unified filed with PERB to reconsider the remedies laid out in its June decision.
Pro-union educators in Clovis Unified, the largest district in California without a teachers union, celebrated the PERB decisions in an interview Tuesday.
“We’re very thankful that PERB refused to reconsider a ruling that’s a very strong ruling against the district,” said Kristin Heimerdinger, a spokesperson for the Association of Clovis Educators, which has been trying to unionize Clovis teachers for years.
But the district still has the opportunity to appeal the decision, and a Clovis Unified spokesperson said they’re still weighing whether to “take our concerns to the courts.”
“We are disappointed that this appointed board has chosen not to reconsider what we contend are punitive measures that overreach their authority,” said Kelly Avants, a Clovis Unified spokesperson, in an email Tuesday.
While the district decides, Heimerdinger said ACE is “treading water,” waiting to see whether the already yearslong legal battle over Faculty Senate will stretch on.
The fight over Faculty Senate ongoing since the 1980s
In December, PERB sided with ACE on years’ worth of charges the pro-union group had filed, dating back to 2021.
That ruling found that Clovis Unified gave illegal support to the Faculty Senate in the form of stipends and release time for the group’s officers.
It also alluded to a 1984 decision from PERB, which similarly found that Clovis Unified gave illegal support to the Faculty Senate in the years following its formation in 1977.
But December’s ruling stopped short of ordering the Faculty Senate to disband, which led ACE to file an exception to their own victory.
They asked the board to strengthen its ruling and order the Faculty Senate to disestablish, an appeal they won in June.
Clovis Unified remains critical of the June decision as well as Monday’s decision to leave the previous PERB ruling intact.
Avants said that ever since ACE filed its complaints, the district has “taken steps to end or suspend the services” it once provided to the Faculty Senate, and that they “do not feel that was recognized by PERB.”
She confirmed that the district has yet to record the video of the superintendent outlining how its support for Faculty Senate violated the law, “pending a final outcome of the matter through PERB and/or the courts.”
Clovis Unified has 30 days to respond to the Oct. 14 ruling.
What’s next?
The PERB decisions come with another benefit for pro-union teachers, including an order to delay the expiration date of any signatures they’ve received from teachers who want the union to be their exclusive representative by an extra year.
That order benefits not only ACE, but also a rival group seeking to become Clovis Unified teachers’ exclusive representative, called the Independent Clovis Unified Educators.
While ACE is backed by the California Teachers Association, ICUE has touted its lack of affiliation with any outside labor organization.
In its December appeal, ACE argued that PERB should deny ICUE that same signature extension, since they’re a “nonparty” in the charges ACE had previously filed.
But the recent PERB decisions said ICUE should benefit from the extension as well, since “egregious violations by the District and the Senate made organizing difficult for both ACE and ICUE.”
In an email Thursday, ICUE spokesperson Kim Mongelli said June’s decision helped boost their signatures from teachers to over 800.
“Once the District complies with the notice requirements of the PERB decision we are confident that the remaining supporters of Faculty Senate will support ICUE,” she said, “as it is the only way to provide legally recognized teacher representation and the title of exclusive representative.
“This will maintain CUSD’s independence from CTA or any other outside labor union, which is one of our main goals in forming ICUE.”
Although it’s still unclear whether the district will prolong the fight over Faculty Senate, Heimerdinger said the recent PERB decisions have already made a difference this school year.
“Faculty senate has been inactive this year,” she said. “There have been no meetings. There have been no newsletters sent out. They literally have done nothing the entire school year.
“So teachers who were dependent on that have to see the writing on the wall,” she added, “that that is not a viable means of representation going forward.”
Heimerdinger, a Clovis Unified teacher for over 30 years, thinks the lack of activity from Faculty Senate this year combined with the PERB rulings will force teachers to make a decision on whether they want representation soon.
“I do think that before I am retired, teachers will have made a decision, one way or the other,” she said, “of what they want their representation to look like.”
