"As a child my family's menu consisted of
two choices: take it, or leave it."
By Dick Gale, SDEA Executive Director

'm sure that old-time Las Vegas comic Buddy Hackett's commentary about mealtime at his house resonates with many of us. It reminds us of a simple time where choices were limited and consequences involved either eating your vegetables or going to bed hungry.

Ah, if the world was that simple. In reality, in the San Diego Unified School District, nearly every major educational decision involves the weighing of many alternatives and the balancing of many needs. At the most basic level, these decisions reflect the educational priorities of the District administration and the members of the SDUSD Board of Education.

For example, the District is currently moving to change the grade level configuration at a number of elementary schools in the district. The decision to add a 6th, 7th or 8th grade to a school brings with it a myriad of possibilities and questions and requires a thorough examination of numerous issues during the decision-making process. SDEA favors teacher and parent involvement early on in this process.

However, my point is not to speak either in favor or against such re-organization. Rather, it is to point out the choices involved and the consequences of making such choices. For example, according to the office of the SDUSD architect, facility improvements at the eight schools planning to add a grade next year total nearly $8 million. Once spent, these dollars can never be spent anywhere else. Their opportunity cost is anything else the District could have done with those millions.

I use this example to give you a sense of the difficult balancing act faced by members of the Compensation Comparability Task Force. As we complete our second month of work, it is becoming increasingly clear that choices to spend available budget dollars for one need, like increasing the career earnings of SDEA's bargaining unit members, will require dollars not to be spent on other areas of the budget.

SDEA's members on the task force (John Anella, Marc Capitelli, Viraj Ward, Steve Kaplan & Dick Gale) are united in the belief that compensation for teachers and support staff should be the District's number one priority when making budgetary decisions. Our job has been to take a holistic look at the District budget and offer up suggestions of how more dollars can be moved into our bargaining unit salaries.

This effort is supported by the type of data the Association is sharing with our members during the SDEA All-Member meetings (being held eleven times this month at various school sites throughout the District). SDEA has presented comparability data that demonstrates that over a twenty-year career, a teacher or support staffer in SDUSD earns over $80,000 less than their counterparts in San Diego County. We are making the case that compensation for our bargaining unit members must be a priority for the District.

Another statistic that supports our belief that teacher salaries have not been a priority comes from SDEA's historical analysis of the District's budget. During the past seven years, the portion of the District budget devoted to the salaries of our bargaining unit members has declined from over 47.6% in 2000-01 to approximately 40.3% today (based on the District's 2006-07 1st Interim report). With a budget over $1.2 billion, that means nearly $80,000,000 less is being spent of teachers' salaries today compared to seven years ago.

During the same period, the percentage of the district budget spent on health benefits has gone up from approximately 7% to nearly 10% of the total district budget. The joint decision to maintain fully-paid family benefits has enabled our District to have a fighting chance of recruiting prospective staff members and SDEA was (and is) a partner in attempting to limit increased costs for benefits.

Nevertheless, when looking at salaries, the inescapable conclusion is that we are simply not a priority. Pats on the back and notes from parents are gratifying. Praise from administration and the feeling that you are making a positive difference for students have great emotional value. But those psychic rewards do not pay the bills and do not enable the district to attract and retain the highest quality teachers and support staff.

Our bargaining unit comparability did not decline to near the bottom overnight. Nor will it be rectified overnight. SDEA recognizes that the process will take some time. But we also believe that the time to make the commitment to improve teacher compensation is now.