Is Your School Using Your Class Size Reduction Teacher Correctly?

You may remember that the union contract that you voted on this summer required SDUSD to hire 86 elementary teachers “for the purpose of reducing elementary class sizes.” But reps at some schools are reporting that additional educators are not being utilized to reduce class size. Instead, the District and site admin are assigning them to do push-in/pull-out work, and possibly substitute for teachers who are absent. None of those things reduce class size, so that’s not in line with what we’ve agreed to.

If your site received a new, extra teacher this year (over and above the number the school has for regular allocation), that new, extra teacher should be used to reduce elementary class size. (If that’s already happening, that’s just what the union contract says — great!) Note: You might have an extra educator that is providing reading intervention with the TK-2 Literacy Acceleration Plan.

What Reps can do now if your principal isn’t using the extra teacher to reduce class size

1. Know that we have to act quickly. The longer that we wait, the more resistance there will be to reorganizing to reduce class size.
2. Talk to the new, extra teacher. Find out what they are assigned to do. Tell them the union contract says that they are supposed to be used to reduce elementary class size, and it’s not their fault that the District didn’t follow the contract — but we need to fix it.
3. Reply to this email to let me know if your school is having this problem.
4. Have a mini-20 minute Zoom union meeting about elementary class size. Here’s what you probably want to cover:
   • The new union contract says that the new, extra teacher is supposed to be used to reduce elementary class size.
   • What’s happening instead
   • Discussion: Can we organize a representative group of teachers to join reps in an online meeting with the principal to call for the union contract to be honored and class size reduced by X specific date.
   • If the principal says no, we don’t have to back down. We can: file a formal grievance, get more teachers involved, get parents involved.

In Solidarity,Kisha Borden
SDEA President