It's About Time

Say what you will about unions. I say that sometimes having a contract and grievance process is a good thing.

When I was hired by our school district 12 years ago, I was assigned to three buildings and had a caseload of over 1900 students. Our contract language stated that caseload maximum is 1800 students. Being one who feels like if there are rules and contract  language, well then, those things dang well ought to be followed. So of course I asked about the overload and was told not to rock the boat--for your first 3 years as an employee of the district you are considered on provisional status and can be fired at the employer's will. I don't like to let things go, but I also did like my job, so I did let it go. And since the other nurses weren't agitating for change, I didn't bring it up again.

Over the years I have become involved with the union--I did so because I got tired of paying a lot of money every year to an organization I did not feel was doing enough to represent me and fix the overload issue. I started out slow. First I was a building representative for a couple of years. When the executive board decided to add a board position to represent Educational Staff Associates (SLP's, OT's, PT's, school psychologists, and nurses) I decided to run for the position. I have been serving on the executive board for our local association for the past 3 years.

Last year one of the nurses had had enough with the caseload issue--nothing had changed since my hire date 12 years ago. Her caseload was even worse as she had one of the high schools (over 1800 students) and two middle schools. So she agitated for change. And we got some movement from the district. They increased nursing time by 0.5 FTE, enough time to relieve caseload numbers for that nurse and for me.

Unfortunately, there was still one nurse seriously over caseload numbers (she has the other high school and a middle school.) Unbeknownst to me, she had been told that she would also see relief in her numbers. Now, she is a very patient, non-agitator person so she waited and waited and waited. Then this fall when I started pushing to get some health room assistants to help during the peak time of health room use (recess through lunch), she told me she would really like to see her caseload numbers reduced. She then told me how the district had promised her last year that they were working on reducing her numbers and then at the start of this year was told it probably wasn't going to happen.

Wrong answer! By this time I was feeling pretty confident in how the union works and the grievance process. I also felt that with the ground we had gained last year, the district was still receptive to working with us to reduce caseload. I did find that it required a verbal notice of grievance to get them to move and they took the maximum amount of time to move, but on Monday morning the nurse called to tell me that she had had a conversation with our supervisor and he told her she would now be at the high school full-time. We had been approved for another 0.5 FTE.

BOOM! That is an increase in 1.0 FTE over the course of a year. The nursing program hadn't seen any increase in time in over 15 years. We probably wouldn't have seen this increase if 1) we didn't have contract language regarding caseload and 2) nurses were willing to agitate for change.