Letters in Solidarity: We Won a Pay Increase to Fully Staff Our Schools

Big news – we finally have a tentative agreement with the district on our pay for this school year! This came about after months of escalating collective actions by SDEA union educators in our contract campaign, most recently pickets at 125 schools. If SDEA members vote to ratify this agreement next week, we’ll all benefit from a much-needed salary increase of 0.5% retroactive to July 1, 2024, and an additional 1% increase retroactive to January 1, 2025, resulting in an total wage increase of 1.5% as we begin next school year.

This raise comes at a critical time as the impact of special education vacancies at the majority of schools are acutely felt by educators and students. In addition, 23 new TK classrooms are slated to open next school year and will need Early Childhood Educator co-teachers that the district has historically struggled to staff. While we have made progress on improving our pay and can enjoy a well-earned break this summer, we have to be ready to return in the fall ready to continue our fight for fully staffed, stable and inclusive schools. That starts with bargaining for our salaries moving forward and the district still has not responded to our proposal for an overall 8% increase over the 25-26 and 26-27 school years.

Improving our wages is the district’s most powerful tool to fully staff our schools, considering that San Diego has the fastest cost of living rise in the country and homeownership is out of reach for many educators who would need a family income of over $258,000 to afford the mortgage payment on the average home for sale in our region. More and more of us are unable to live anywhere near the schools where we teach and that is driving some educators to seriously consider leaving our district or the profession entirely.

It shouldn’t have to be this way in a state with the fourth largest economy in the world that nevertheless funds schools at less than the national average with our inequitable tax system that insulates billionaires and corporations from paying their fair share to fund the public good. That’s why we’re joining other education unions across California within the We Can’t Wait campaign to generate the collective power we need to take on the statewide school funding problem that we cannot fix alone in our districts.

The victory on our wage increase for this school year is the product of our organizing at schools throughout the district from the pickets to rallies at walk-ins in February, passing out thousands of flyers to families in January to share our demands for the schools our students deserve, ratifying our We Can’t Wait contract priorities at union meetings in November and developing our campaign platform at Bargaining Input Sessions at our schools as we began this school year. Let’s keep this momentum going with our Fight for Schools action on May 17 at 11 am at Roosevelt Middle School to protect federal funding for our schools and our students’ civil rights. See you there!