Retroactive raise ratified! What’s next?

Votes are in: Our 1.5% retroactive raise for 2024-25 has been ratified!

SDEA members voted this week to ratify the tentative agreement reached in our last bargaining session. This means that the District can move forward with paying educators their retroactive raises. Our agreement says that all retroactive payments and salary schedule adjustments shall be paid and implemented no later than December 31, 2025.

• See certified election results here.
• Read the full agreement here.
• Read answers to Frequently Asked Questions about this tentative agreement. This is a living document that will continue to be updated.
• Click here to make a copy of a spreadsheet you can use to calculate your retroactive pay.

Our ongoing fight for pay, staffing, and stability

This 1.5% raise is a result of our direct pressure, and we will need to keep up the pressure when negotiations resume after summer. We’re still waiting on responses to several key proposals which directly impact staffing for hard-to fill-positions, like Special Education and Early Childhood. We know that our demands are not isolated – pay, staffing, and stability for school communities is all connected. Especially when limited budgets are being stretched impossibly thin, it’s easy to get distracted by fighting over crumbs. We need more than crumbs.

The bigger picture: What’s at stake

Despite our statewide mobilization last weekend and national pressure from educators and others concerned about the impact to healthcare, immigrant communities, and more, the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” has passed the House and is on the way to the Senate. Read more from the NEA about what this means, and make sure your California Senators know how this would impact your students. CTA has a calculator to see exactly how much San Diego Unified stands to lose in cuts to school meals, Special Education funding, and supports for lower-income families. 

Our school communities already lack resources even without these looming cuts. We’ll need to keep fighting:

• Locally, to make sure the District invests every dollar available in what our schools need most
• With educators across the state, to make sure California increases the funding available
• With educators nationwide, to protect public education itself