The newest members of the CTA family — classified employees — finally have a voice in the organization. And with that voice, they can now speak to a wide audience about the issues and challenges affecting the workplace.

Being part of a strong union will help immensely when it comes time to negotiate a contract, say classified employees like Bob Weaver (above) from Lake County, Mary Lavalaid (below) from San Francisco and Michael Musser from Ventura (below).

First and foremost is the need for a “living wage,” say ESP members, who sometimes make little more than minimum wage and are hugely underpaid in comparison with the private sector.

NEA has mounted a nationwide campaign to enact a living wage for ESP members. “We know that in many areas of the country, ESP are forced to work two, three or more jobs to make ends meet,” says NEA President Reg Weaver. “That’s outrageous. Choosing a career in public schools shouldn’t mean trading away your right to a decent standard of living.”

Mary Lavalais, a paraprofessional member of United Educators of San Francisco, works 40 hours a week as an elementary adviser at Community Elementary School, counseling groups of students in the classroom and doing family outreach, not to mention yard duty.

Then, to make ends meet, she reports for her second job in an after-school program.

“Paraprofessionals need to be given more respect,” says Lavalais. To her, that means a decent wage to live on “so we don’t have to work a second job.”

When Bob Weaver’s four children attended school in the district where he’s a maintenance worker, he was surprised to find that they were eligible for free lunches. “I wondered how this could be, since I was working full time in a skilled area,” says Weaver, a member of the Lakeport Unified Classified Employees Association (LUCEA) in Lake County. “It wasn’t like I was collecting a welfare check, even though it felt like it at times.”

Kathleen Newman, who works the switchboard at Ventura High School in Ventura, is a single parent who can’t survive on $14.10 an hour — even with child support and the help of relatives. “I’ve had to work a variety of part-time jobs just to make ends meet,” says the Ventura Classified Employees Association member.

A significant difference between classified and certificated staff is that classified employees don’t have the ability to earn significant increases in pay like teachers do over their careers, says Michael Musser, a Ventura carpenter and State Council member who’s serving as NEA Director ESP at-large. Whereas a teacher with many years of experience and advanced degrees can earn as much as $70,000 to $90,000 a year, classified employees still earn less than $30,000 on average. “And often they pay out of pocket for health care.”

“When our health benefits got so expensive, one of our paras had to go out and get another job just so she could pay the district the difference for her health benefits,” says LUCEA President Doreen McGuire-Grigg in rural Lake County. “It’s not fair, it’s not equitable and it’s highly frustrating. Health insurance is an issue throughout the country, but for us it’s really horrible. There are people in my chapter with broken teeth who can’t afford to have them fixed.”

Health care is one of a number of issues classified and certificated staff have in common, but it actually hurts ESP more than teachers, says Michael Downey, a custodian at Balboa Middle School in Ventura who serves on VCEA’s board. “Right now districts hire our people for two or three and a half hours a day so they don’t have to pay benefits, or for five and three-quarters hours so they don’t have to pay another level of benefits. They do everything possible to avoid paying benefits to classified.”

If Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s universal health care bill (SB 840) passes, he says, “the issue of hours would go away. We would be able to hire people for the hours we need them. And our retirees would get health benefits.”

Job security is another issue for classified employees.

Whenever there’s money to be cut from the budget, it’s done as far from the classroom as possible, a phrase that sounds good to teachers but not to classified employees. “Often we don’t have the same rehire rights,” says Musser, who keeps the 33 Ventura schools in working order from a utility truck that serves as a mobile repair shop.

Sometimes districts contract out work, thinking that they can get it done cheaper, but just as voucher schools threaten to undermine a quality public education, privatizing ESP work threatens the quality of support services in public schools. That’s because cheaper labor doesn’t always ensure quality, says Musser.

Child nutrition workers Jeanette Cochran and Nancy Kappmeyer prepare a balanced meal for students like Clayshia Hill, Omar, Meza and Ethan Griffithe (below)at Mentone Elementary in Mentone.

“When you have people who are employed by the district, they know the students and are part of the school family,” says Musser. “With other people, there are no guarantees. The school district doesn’t even interview them.”

People who haven’t undergone background checks could slip through the cracks.

With cutbacks in ESP workers comes an increase in workload for the remaining staff, says Downey, who was the first ESP from California to sit on the NEA Board of Directors (1988-94). “When they laid off custodians in our district, classrooms were not cleaned every day. It was not a good environment for students to learn in, or for their health and safety. And in one school they were short of bus drivers, so they had drivers double up on runs. We had kids sitting at schools a long time waiting for a bus to do its first run and come back for a second run.”

“We continue to struggle with workloads in our district,” says Redlands Education Support Professionals Association President Paula Monroe. When staff is cut back, she says, the remaining workers are often chastised for not doing the extra work during their regular workday — or else they end up working overtime without pay to make up the difference.

Some issues can be addressed at the bargaining table. As VCEA’s bargaining chair, Downey sits on both the classified and the certificated bargaining teams, as does the certificated bargaining chair. The coordinated arrangement keeps the district from playing one group against the other. “It completely stops the district from saying classified is okay with a proposal or teachers are okay with it when they’re not.”

“There’s nothing the district can hide from either team,” adds Musser. “They can’t drive a wedge between them.”

Ultimately, the solution for many of the issues classified staff face involves standing up and being counted.

When Buena High School head custodian Lupe Gallegos started working for the Ventura school district 15 years ago, he worked for four months and then got laid off. If it hadn’t been for his union, he says, he would have just thrown up his hands and looked for employment elsewhere.

VCEA worked with the district to get him hired as a substitute custodian and grounds worker. A year and a half later, when the district started hiring again, the association made sure Gallegos was hired back. They also helped him get his earlier work counted toward his six-month probation period. “I didn’t have to start all over again.”

All of this makes him a very loyal association member.

He has since served as a site rep, a member of the board of directors, vice president, co-president and president. He also does the newsletter and the website with skills he learned as a participant at CTA’s Summer Institute.

“It’s my way of paying back the association,” he says.

“The hard part is most classified staff don’t understand what they’re missing when they’re not members,” says Downey. “They figure this is the way it is. They don’t realize what it could be.

“By being members, they could help make things better for all of us.”

“Just like teachers, we deserve respect,” says Musser. “If there aren’t bus drivers to bring students to school, they can’t be taught. Without child nutrition workers to feed students, they won’t receive the nourishment they need before they can attend to learning. Without office secretaries, campuses cannot function. It’s very important to understand the important role ESP members play in the education of our children.”