"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
By Dick Gale, SDEA Executive Director

Two events involving SDEA and the District have begun this month that could have profound implications for SDUSD's future. SDEA's participation in these joint endeavors is designed to empower teachers as collaborative decision-makers at their sites and to enhance their professional compensation as employees of SDUSD.

One event, which I have written about previously, is the meeting of the joint Compensation Comparability Task Force. This group has met several times and has had purposeful and detailed discussions related to the District budget.

The data search has yielded a detailed look at school site allocation formulas and a breakdown of nine actual sample school site budgets. It has confirmed a District projection of continued declining enrollment through 2015. It has also documented a continued charter school enrollment increase (next year, charter enrollment is projected to be over 10% of the SDUSD total).

But at this point in the process, the blizzard of numbers has yielded more questions than answers. Task force members are trying to keep the conversations anchored in the realities of school sites with the knowledge that critical decisions are currently being made by school site governance teams and school site councils all over San Diego Unified.

Committee members from both sides remain focused on the task of making recommendations to bring SDUSD bargaining unit salaries to the median among all districts in San Diego County. Closing that 8% gap will not be easy, but SDEA is committed to assisting in an authentic budget reprioritization process.

The other event is the on-going Shared Decision-Making trainings currently being held for site principals and association representatives. These sessions, co-trained by SDEA's UniServ Field Organizers and Sam Wong of SDUSD, bring together site leadership folks in a safe environment to discuss their shared responsibility to manage our schools in a way that enhances student outcomes and provides for true collaboration in day-to-day decision-making.

The four-hour training, which is being held at the SDEA office, is being received enthusiastically by most of the participants. For some, the message of creating a purposeful community and promoting collective efficacy serves as a reinforcement of practices already existing at the site. For others, the messages serve as a starting point for change by creating a common vocabulary and a context for the leaders responsible for working together at the schools.

SDEA has had an opportunity to interact with teacher union leaders and staff from large urban districts throughout California as part of CTA's Large Urban Advisory Committee (LUAC) and, more recently, as participants in the Teachers Union Reform Network (TURN). In conversations about labor-management relations, it is clear that shared decision-making training is not a reality in many other school districts. So, why is this happening here, now?

Is it because the relational damage that was done in SDUSD during the years of animosity and distrust leave our district nowhere to go but up? Or, is it because the District staff understands that real school improvement is a long-term, laborious, time-consuming process and we must begin now if we are to become America's best?

SDEA's view is somewhere in between. While we don't expect that this one morning together will yield immediate, district-wide transformations, we do believe that a successful outcome in some of our sites will begin to create new realities for teachers and certificated support staff in SDUSD.

We agree with the sentiment expressed above in the quotation from President Abraham Lincoln. The future is designed and created by the actions we engage in today. Our work with the District requires a daily commitment to work collaboratively to reduce conflict at our school sites and to focus together on the needs of our students.

This commitment will not conflict with SDEA's responsibilities as an advocate for our members and their contract. But it will allow us to support change and collectively nurture positive efforts to improve the system so we can meet the educational needs of our students while engaging our staff as true professionals.