MBUTA Notice to Staff Regarding Letters of Recommendation
Dear Mira Costa Faculty,
We stand at a pivotal moment in our lives as professional educators and at a critical
juncture in our history as a faculty. We face a District that has declared impasse after a
refusal to offer us anything but a paltry one-time salary bonus tied to the prospect of
consistently higher fees for medical benefits.
We have generously given our expertise, our passion, and our time to a district that has
depended on us to forego salary increases in order to restore its reserves after they were
undermined by the gross negligence and misconduct of a former board and administration
more than a decade ago.
In our careers at Mira Costa we have devoted ourselves to providing students with an
exemplary education. We are a faculty who has continually and freely given an
extraordinary number of hours to activities that, if not given, would have resulted in an
extremely barren learning landscape. We have given so much because we believe in the
power of learning, the profound beauty of our subject matter, and the precious potential
of our students.
Yet, here we are, looking at the reality of a district that does not value or respect our
enormous contributions enough to offer us a fair wage increase on the salary schedule.
We must stand together and illustrate the countless things we do for free by not doing
them until we have resolved our labor contract.
Commitments to write letters of recommendation will be one of the first things to be
postponed until a contract settlement has been reached. Clearly, this is difficult. And
make no mistake about it, we will be blamed for “hurting kids”. But, remember, it is the
district that is hurting students by placing us in a position in which we have no other
recourse but to withhold many of the things we so dearly love to give. (On Tuesday,
August 28, the union will pass out notices regarding letters of recommendation for
teachers to post in their classrooms.)
We must support each other through this decisive time. If we don’t, we face the prospect
of a district that will continue to give us nothing, nothing, and more nothing because they
know that we will accept it.
Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Association
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