After months of negotiations, the Long Beach Unified School District and the Long Beach chapter of the California School Employees Association have reached a labor agreement.

The CSEA Long Beach chapter is the oldest active CSEA chapter in the state and represents over 2,100 classified employees in the LBUSD, including maintenance workers, instructional aides, bus drivers, nutrition workers and others.

The contract was reached during the two sides’ last bargaining session and was approved 5-0 by the LBUSD Board of Education at its Nov. 18 meeting. The CSEA employees had been working this school year without a contract.

“We were able to develop an agreement that helps our employees stay safe as well as supports our students’ needs,” said LBUSD Director of Employee Relations and Ethics Steven Rockenbach, who led the district’s negotiation efforts.

The agreement provides worksite flexibility for several types of CSEA employees, including behavior intervention specialists, instructional aides and language specialists.

That is significant in part because the LBUSD this year has seen a record number of requests for leave to deal with medical or family concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. That record number has largely been a result of employees needing time off to care for their children, who aren’t able to attend school while the campuses are closed.

While teachers won the right to teach virtually from home earlier this year, classified staff—at first—didn’t get the same protections, something they’d been negotiating for all school year.

Chet Davidson is an LBUSD locksmith and a member of the CSEA negotiating team. He spoke forcefully at a board meeting earlier this year about the need for workplace flexibility, including the ability to work from home when possible.

“Fortunately the teachers that have kids in the district have that option, and we need to have that option,” he said.

Davidson told the story of one of his union’s members, a single mother taking care of four kids who reportedly asked him, “‘How am I supposed to do this when I have to be at work?’ I didn’t have an answer other than, ‘We’re working on it.’ We have story after story. People who have to be at work and they have little kids who have to be at home learning. They need help and they’re desperate.”

In addition to workplace flexibility, the contact also outlines standards for health screenings, reporting of unsafe conditions and a modified leave policy that will provide 10 additional days of leave for employees who have to quarantine.

LBUSD board members said they were pleased to see the negotiations reach an amicable conclusion.

“Our classified staff have been working hard nonstop since schools closed; they didn’t get any time off to deal with this,” said board member Megan Kerr.

“They’re the backbone of our district,” said board member Juan Benitez.

The contract will be active until June 30, 2021.

Editor’s note: This story originally incorrectly referred to Steven Rockenbach by his son’s name, Shane.