Clovis schools ordered by state to disband Faculty Senate, citing decades of violations

The state ordered Clovis’s school district to disband its Faculty Senate – an employee group that some consider a district-sponsored union substitute – after district employees appealed an earlier ruling that ordered the district to stop financially supporting and favoring the group.

With the ruling, the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) effectively increased the severity of an earlier ruling, requesting the district and senate end their relationship, citing Clovis Unified School District’s violations of employees’ rights.

The Faculty Senate has been Clovis Unified’s teachers’ representation group and has operated in the district instead of a formal union. The Association of Clovis Educators (ACE) filed a complaint with the state, claiming the district has unlawfully favored the Faculty Senate and engaged in unfair labor practices for years.

According to the resolution, Clovis Unified engaged in such “extensive” violations because – among the several infractions – the Faculty Senate “is literally dependent on the district’s support,” and spent more than $162,000 in senator stipends, with total expenses adding up to more than $610,000 between 2020-2022 goes against the Educational Employment Relations Act.

Clovis Unified also incorporated the Faculty Senate into its administrative structure. Its president reports to the district’s superintendent, per the PERB’s findings. When teachers were dissatisfied with the Faculty Senate, the district responded by running the senate’s election, moving its president’s office closer to human resources and promising the group would comply with district expectations.

Additional violations, as The Bee previously reported, included providing the Faculty Senate with school and office supplies including business cards, covering copier machine expenses, paying for the senate president’s cell phone bill, giving access to district technology and a Save Mart open purchase order for refreshments for meetings and maintaining a district car – including gas costs – for the senate president to use.

“To secure free choice in the district for the first time since EERA’s passage almost five decades ago, we must break the ties between the District and the [Faculty] Senate,” the PERB stated.

The resolution to disband also says that a cease-and-desist order would not have been enough because it, “would be insufficient to overcome years (or in this case decades) of advantages given to an employer-dominated organization. This is exactly such a case.”

On the other hand, the PERB makes it clear that the order does not specifically give additional support, favor, or “clears the field” for ACE.

To place ACE on an “equal footing” with the Faculty Senate would require providing ACE with “company union” benefits like the ones Faculty Senate received, the PERB stated, “including hundreds of thousands of dollars in public taxpayer money each year” for the decades and favorable support Clovis Unified gave its Faculty Senate.

“To do so would simply replace one employer-dominated employee organization with another,” the resolution reads. “Doing so would not only deprive employees of free choice but would prejudice ICUE or any other future organization seeking to compete with ACE.”

Independent Clovis Unified Educators, known as ICUE, is another local educator group seeking to represent district teachers, “without any outside influences.” Different from ACE, they’re not backed up or supported by the California Teachers Association (CTA).

Yet, overall, ACE sees this resolution as a victory.

“[The] PERB’s decision today paves the way to create an environment where educators can be free to participate and engage meaningfully in those decisions that impact our students’ learning environment,” ACE said in a statement. “Today’s decision gives Clovis educators space to choose their own organization to have a strong and independent voice in CUSD.”

ACE spokesperson Kristin Heimerdinger said that it will continue to advocate to become the exclusive representative of Clovis educators and plan to meet and strategize for next year’s efforts, the group stated in an email to The Bee.

Within 15 days of this decision no longer subject to appeal, the district’s superintendent – Corrine Folmer – must read the text specified by the PERB, verbatim, with no additional statements of any kind, where the district’s violations are outlined and the disestablishing of the district’s relationship with the Faculty Senate clearly stated. This reading must be recorded and shared with district staff.

The district’s associate superintendent of human resources and employee relations, Barry Jager, sent a statement to district employees on Friday morning, stating that the district was made aware of the PERB’s resolution at the end of Thursday’s workday.

“We are still looking through the details of that ruling to better understand its implications for the District and our employees’ self-representation,” Jager told employees.

Once the district analyzes and considers the changes it is being ordered to comply with, Jager said it will be decided if Clovis Unified would appeal the PERB’s ruling.

“Regardless of the eventual outcome of this case,” he said, ‘our administration remains committed to supporting and valuing every single one of our employees, and will always respect their decisions about how they want their voices represented.”