Yesterday marked our tenth bargaining session, and the District finally brought some proposals with price tags. From the very beginning, our SDEA bargaining team has put all our cards on the table. In our first few sessions, we presented proposals for nearly every open article in our contract, because we wanted the District to have all the information they needed to meaningfully respond even amid tight budgets. For months, we got excuses, especially on the issues educators feel most strongly about, like wages and Special Education staffing.
At yesterday’s marathon session, the District presented 22 proposals in total. Almost none of them are acceptable. Most reflect priorities that are deeply out of touch with the realities that educators and students face every day. After months of waiting, what we received was not progress… it was insulting. We know budgets are tight, but we also know that there are significant unallocated reserves. The District can use reserves to fund solutions for this year and at the same time continue to advocate for increased funding at the state and federal levels. Instead, the District continues to show up with recycled excuses and proposals that ignore practical, experience-based solutions that we’ve shared as educators. We deserve better. Our students deserve better.
What do you call no raise and an increase in copays? A pay cut!
Back in the Spring, we proposed an 8% raise over the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years. The District finally responded to that proposal and countered with… 0% this year, and some complicated contingency language for raises next year IF they get more funding. That’s no pay raise this year for educators living in one of the most expensive cities in the country… even when SDUSD is getting a 2.3% funding increase in COLA.
(Remember, the 1.5% raise that we recently saw on our paychecks and as retroactive checks was a raise we bargained retroactively going back to the 2024-25 school year, since we agreed to put off bargaining that raise until the District had more budget information, so we could get the best raise possible. Now, we need to agree on raises for this school year and next school year.)
Along with a 0% raise, the District also proposed getting rid of the $10 copay limit for Kaiser. 41% of our members are on Kaiser (as the most affordable option) and upping copays would be a significant cost for members.
Keep in mind that when we bargain for our pay and benefits, we are also bargaining for other District employees since other unions have clauses in their contract that tie their raises to ours, meaning that this kind of cut will impact classified employees as well. Even small increases in copays can be catastrophic for anyone who requires frequent medical appointments, or for families already struggling to get by.
Read the full counterproposals from the District below:
- Article 7: Wages: 2025-2026 & 2026-2027
- See the Salary Schedule & Rules in Appendices A-G to see the relevant changes for your specific position.
- Article 9: Health & Welfare Benefits
No expanded leave
The District refused to expand leaves that would give educators the professional discretion and flexibility necessary to navigate family and health challenges without leaving the District. In particular, they are doubling down on not allowing members on unpaid leave to work at all. (For example, if a member had to temporarily leave to care for a family member or to follow a deployed partner, they would have to resign if they wanted to get any employment – even while on unpaid leave.) Read the District’s full counterproposal on Article 10: Leave Policies
Visiting Teachers: More work for the same pay
The District rejected our proposal for higher pay rates for long-term VTs and for VTs in Special Education positions, and for a new “Contracted VT” position. Remember, VTs and all unit members will get any raise bargained in the wages articles. (And the District has proposed that the raise for this school year should be zero.) Along with no pay increases for our lowest paid unit members, the District also proposed language that would allow VTs to be forced to stay on campus longer and work through preps.
See all the District’s suggested changes to Article 32: Visiting Teachers and Appendix D: Visiting Teacher Salary Schedule & Rules. (You can see our initial suggestions in our February 27 proposals on those articles.)
Special Education: Go ahead and leave it broken
We proposed a package of Special Education solutions, and after waiting months for any response the answer is: Nope. The District countered our suggestions with the status quo plus an excuse about funding.
- No automatic stipend for ed specialists who are over the caseload cap (which would be more enforceable than the current language that has allowed the District to ignore caseload limits and then ignore grievances for years)
- No caps on 504s
- No proportional SLP caseloads
- No monthly case management days for Ed Specialists (our idea based on what is offered in Temecula)
- No improved ECSE instructional model
- No improved caseloads for School Psychs
- No reimbursement for SPED credentials for employees seeking to get SpEd credentials in order to fill vacant SpEd positions
- An increased stipend only for ESN teachers (rather than an increased stipend for all SpEd teachers, to hire and retain in these hard to fill positions.)
Basically, the District’s counterproposal is to reject anything that might fill Special Education vacancies and keep exhausted and drowning Ed Specialists from quitting mid-year.
Read the District’s entire counterproposal for Article 29: Special Education, and the connected stipend proposal for Appendix A (see Section 8)
Early Education: Doubling down on a pay cut
While we agreed to put in the contract a TK class size cap of 20, the District still hasn’t come through on the most urgently felt issue for ECE Teachers: A pay cut of $4250 when the District let the ECE Teacher Stipend expire in June, and a refusal to negotiate over extending this stipend. ECE Teachers are the lowest paid contracted teachers in the District, and they’ve been advocating for this to be fixed for months, including meeting as a delegation with the Superintendent. At their union meeting this week, ECE teachers took photos to hang up in our union hall, so the District bargaining team would have to see the faces of the educators (primarily women of color) who are impacted by this pay cut, as they’ve ignored this issue, session after session. The District is hinting that they’ll only re-add the stipend if TK teachers give in and start changing diapers.
See the District’s counterproposals on Article 13: Class Size and Appendix B: Early Childhood Education Programs Salary Schedule & Rules.
Other staffing counterproposals from the District:
- No higher pay for bilingual educators who translate and interpret: Article 22: Biligual/ESL Teachers.
- Limited progress on fair Summer School staffing: Article 17: Summer School/Intersession Hours & Conditions of Employment.
- Still reluctant to protect and compensate new educator’s preparation time before the start of the school year when scheduling New Employee Orientation: Article 5: Employee Organization Rights.
- Ongoing conversations about language to protect educators from being replaced by AI: Article 2: Recognition.
- Refusal to improve elementary Prep Time Teacher allocation ratios in Appendix M, and adjustments to secondary prep time math in Appendix H, which might foreshadow future attempts to impose 4×4 secondary schedules.
Maintaining the right to layoffs.
We had proposed no layoffs during the term of this contract, since our schools are already understaffed, but the District won’t commit to that, as a declining enrollment district. See their counterproposal on Article 19: Layoff & Reemployment.
Scared of putting Equity on paper.
The District entirely rejected our addition of an Equity article, which we had proposed to repurpose Article 35, which addressed the now-discontinued Parent Home Visits Project. It’s not really worth reading their counterproposal since they completely left out everything we suggested, but you can see what we proposed back in February – Article 35: Equity and Support for Students and Communities. This included language related to housing supports, protections for students, staff, and students in the face of increased immigration enforcement, LGBTQ+ safe schools, and more. We will continue to push for the Equity article, together with our allies in the Education Justice Coalition, as our communities continue to be targeted.
Other stability conversations:
- We are still trying to get rid of the unnecessary chaos of Fall Excessing and tweak our transfer policies. The District only wants to limit Fall excessing at the highest need schools, and they’ve rejected our proposed change to how “indispensable services” currently is a loophole for administrators to play favorites. They also refused to create a clear process for assigning extended day assignments – opportunities for up to several thousands of additional dollars. See the District’s full counterproposal on Article 12: Transfer Policies.
- Still inching toward agreement on Article 36: Community Schools
Stay Informed:
Our next bargaining sessions are scheduled for January 15 and January 29. Yesterday’s session included a LOT of proposals! See our tracker for all proposals exchanged so far and all tentative agreements, with links to read the full text of each.
Stay Organized:
Considering that the responses from the district yesterday were so pathetic, it’s clear that we need to keep showing up. Whenever we show up to fight for ourselves and our students, we are flexing our muscles and our potential to demonstrate our power in the future. Our students and educators deserve so much more than what we were offered yesterday, and we need to make sure the District knows that we’re serious when we say: We Can’t Wait!
In Solidarity,
SDEA’s Bargaining Team
Kyle Weinberg, SDEA President, Ed. Specialist: Mild/Moderate, English and History Teacher; Laurie Bailon, Restorative Justice Teacher, Bell MS; Carly Bresee, Ed. Specialist: Moderate/Severe, Lafayette ES, Sarah Darr, SDEA Secretary, WCW Campaign Organizer & SLP; Christina Gallegos, ECSE Teacher, Rodriguez ES; Candace Gyure, School Nurse; Stacy Hernandez, SDEA Bargaining Chair & 2nd Grade Teacher, Dailard El.; Andrew Melia, School Psychologist, Riley School; Elizabeth Miller, Ed. Specialist: Mild/Moderate, Lewis MS; Eri Nall, Head Counselor; Kiki Ochoa, History and Ethnic Studies Lead Teacher, Lincoln HS; Lori Schmersal, PE Teacher & Coach, Clairemont HS; plus SDEA staff Anthony Saavedra, Executive Director, Sara Holerud, Organizer, and Rafal Dobrowolski, Contract Specialist
