Hoping everyone is having a great start to this school year with your students! This is a good time to reflect on our union’s mission:
“To protect and promote the well-being of its members; to improve the conditions of teaching and learning; to advance the cause of free, universal, and quality public education for all students; to ensure that the human dignity and civil rights of all children, youth and adults are protected; and to secure a more just, equitable, and democratic society.”
Every action we take in solidarity – wearing red, attending a union meeting, talking with families about what we’re fighting for together, encouraging a new colleague to join the union, picketing with your colleagues – helps build a stronger, more united SDEA.
The overarching demand in our We Can’t Wait bargaining platform is fully-staffed, stable and inclusive schools and we must get ready to ramp up our actions again to achieve our goals. Last school year, SDEA members developed our platform at bargaining input sessions, ratified our We Can’t Wait platform, organized walk-ins, passed out thousands of flyers to families, and picketed at 125 schools. Our collective power has already led to some progress at the bargaining table with a 1.5% retroactive raise, but we need to finish what we started and keep the pressure up to win all of our demands!
We also know that we will need to fight for more than our contract in the face of the threats to our students, our colleagues and our communities from the federal administration. Last month, near Linda Vista Elementary, a parent was kidnapped by masked ICE agents while waiting to pick up their child from school. With the recent massive increase in funding for immigration enforcement, this will be an ongoing reality for our school communities and our solidarity is now more important than ever.
As educators, we know that what happens beyond our classrooms and the doors of our schools impacts our students – and as union educators we know we have the power to come together to defend our schools and the communities we serve. Recently, SDEA members joined hundreds of labor and community allies at a Nonviolent Direct Action training hosted by the Labor Council and UCSD Labor Center. We’ve seen educators across the country standing up to ICE raids and we know we need to build our capacity to do the same here, alongside community partners.
Two weeks ago at Ibarra Elementary in City Heights, ICE vehicles were staged in the school parking lot in the morning before drop off. A Unión del Barrio Community Patrol was activated and they were able to get the vehicles to leave before any harm could be done. This shows us that when we mobilize as SDEA union educators together with families and community allies to defend our students, our combined pressure works because When We Fight, We Win!
