Existing law authorizes both the adoption and termination of a merits system in a school district or community college district by a majority vote of its classified employees or by a majority of the voting electors of the school district or community college district. Under existing law, following the filing of a petition for adoption or for the termination of a merit system, the governing board of the district is required to perform specified activities, including but not limited to, formulating the identification system to protect against fraud in the balloting process, and forming a tabulation committee.
This bill amends existing law to require the revised identification system to also ensure ballot secrecy and prohibits a representative of the district from marking the ballot envelope or ballot of any employee, except the bill allows the tabulation committee to adopt a system of uniformly stamping all ballots received or all ballots counted, to help ensure an accurate count. The system can require the stamping be consistent.
AB 289 requires that at least one member of the tabulation committee be a classified member. The classified member shall be designated by the largest exclusive representative of classified employees within the district.
Further, if a district communicates with classified employees opposing the adoption of a merit system or in favor of terminating that system, the district must provide at least equal time and equal access to any exclusive representative of classified employees within the district to communicate its position on adopting or terminating that system. Finally, the bill requires that all election procedures not specified for in the bill be within the scope of representation pursuant to the Educational Employment Relations Act.
(AB 289 amends Sections 45221, 45319, 88051, and 88138 of the Education Code.)
