In addition to the 15% salary increase that we will all see in our paychecks this school year, our SDEA union educator organizing efforts also resulted in a stellar new contract that locks in our fully-paid family healthcare for the next 2 school years. We are the only large district in San Diego County with fully-paid family healthcare and this critical benefit is essential to attracting and keeping the highest quality educators at our schools! In addition, healthcare premium costs are rising, so it’s essential to protect our standard-setting benefits in this volatile environment.
Our strength as a union is the foundation of the historic new contract that we will be starting to implement this school year. The reality is that district leadership didn’t just “give” us the union contract we wanted. We organized to fight for it. Each collective action we took — from t-shirt days to rallies and pickets — built our solidarity and pushed the district closer to saying “yes.” None of us has that power alone, but together, we have the power to win improvements to educator working conditions that are our students’ learning conditions. The source of our strength is that 95% of us choose to be SDEA members. Are you?