Bargaining Update: Will District Do The Right Thing?
District Well-Positioned To Agree To Most of Our Contract Demands--Will They Do The Right Thing?
San Diego Education Association’s member led bargaining team, and our broader membership are currently in the midst of successor contract negotiations. These negotiations were preceded by our grassroots member bargaining input sessions held at over 140 schools and programs last year and where members prioritize our bargaining agenda. This process takes place every few years and involves a complex negotiation process between the district and the union.
This bargaining process kicked off last year when we saw the victory of a 4.5% one-time bonus paid throughout this year to SDEA members. This bonus was intended to not only help with recruitment and retention, but to also help members blunt the effects of inflation. However, our fight for an ongoing wage increase continues.
SDEA proposed a total of $147 million in improvements over the next two years. The improvements proposed by members are focused on enhancing working conditions for educators and improving the educational experience of our students. The majority of the proposed improvements would be invested in raises for educators. Members proposed a 10% raise for each of the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. To give you a sense of the scale of our wages, a 1% increase for SDEA members costs a little more than $7 million. Add to that the fact that principals, school police, and classified employees all have “me too” clauses for wages in their contracts that are tied to our raises, and that number goes up. But there are also significant investments in elementary teacher preparation time, class size, and the maintenance of our industry standard-setting healthcare agreement included in our contract campaign.
Members also proposed doubling elementary preparation time in order to better withstand all of the additional work that educators are dealing with. Programs like elementary preparation time provide enrichment classes for the students while the classroom teachers get their preparation time—and they are expensive. Our elementary preparation time proposal when fully implemented would cost a bit over $12 million dollars per year. However, the good news is that the District will have the funding to support a big chunk of these added costs thanks to the recent passage of Prop. 28 that will bring additional music and arts to our elementary schools. Which is why SDUSD agreed in concept to double elementary preparation time at a bargaining session in late February.
Prop. 28 isn’t the only new funding stream for the District. Thanks to historically high investment in school budgets by the State of California, SDUSD’s general funds budget is anticipated to increase by about $105 million this year—and that’s an on-going increase! Additionally, we’re expecting another significant increase for the 2023-24 school year as well. The time is now for the District to seriously invest in educator pay for us to be able to recruit the best and brightest educators to our schools.
Our union has also proposed investing in reducing class size for physical education, and TK ratios to name just two areas. Given the historic investment in schools by the state, it’s critical for SDUSD to replicate that investment in our classrooms. TK teachers are reporting a need to reduce staffing ratios given the younger age groups the District is currently enrolling.
Last, but definitely not least, just this week we were able to lock in a multi million-dollar tentative agreement to maintain our fully paid healthcare benefits. This is a HUGE win for educators as we remain the only large school district in the county with fully-paid healthcare benefits.
The chances of winning the contract our students and educators deserve increase significantly based on the actions taken by each and every member who steps up to a site picket and other contract campaign actions. This is truly a collective effort - what will you do to support it?
Salary Advancement Rules for Steps & Columns
Appendix A, Sections 2.00 and 4.00 in the union contract lay out how SDEA members advance to higher steps and columns on the salary schedules. These sections apply to teachers, counselors, nurses, and librarians. There are corollary sections in Appendices B, C, F, and G that apply to ECE, Military Science, SLP, and School Psychologist SDEA members.
For most SDEA members, higher pay is tied to additional education and years of service. Columns on the salary schedule correspond to education levels attained, and steps correspond to years of service. The more education you attain, and the more time spent as an educator in SDUSD, means you get higher pay.
Column Advancement
Generally speaking, any course work you take that is reasonably related to your assignment will be credited for column advancement purposes. The contract (in Appendix A, Section 2.021) states that any course that is "within the major or minor; reasonably related to the unit member's District assignment; related to a potential future certificated assignment and posted as semester, quarter, or trimester units on an official transcript in the institution's regular upper division or graduate course number series; or the nature of the course can be expected to provide a substantial increase in the unit member’s skill, knowledge or understanding of the District assignment" will grant you column advancement credit. The key is that the course work must be “reasonably related to [your] distinct assignment” or “potential future assignment,” or that it provides “ a substantial increase in the unit member’s skill, knowledge or understanding of the District assignment.” This has been interpreted to mean that the course work must be related to either a credential you hold, whether you are using it currently or not, or that the course work helps you with the methods and strategies you use in the classroom or in your daily work.
This includes upper division or graduate courses; SDUSD-sponsored Professional Development; lower division, extension, continuing education, and travel courses; continuing education and professional development units (limited to these job classes: Audiologist, Counselor, Library Media Teacher, School Nurse, School Psychologist, and Speech-Language Pathologist); advanced degrees (such as a Masters or Ph.D.) in education or related to the credential area you hold; SDEA-sponsored Professional Development; becoming National Board Certified; getting professional degrees outside of education or the credential area you hold (note: not all degrees or certifications will be fully credited in these areas, and in some cases, only certain courses will count towards column advancement credit); and some types of summer work experience outside of summer school or teaching. In some cases, repeating a course you already took may grant you credit as well.
The rules vary for each category, so check with HR prior to taking a course to ensure you will get credit, and read over these sections of the contract to become familiar with the rules for column advancement. In some cases, the joint SDEA/SDUSD Salary Evaluating Committee may have to get involved in approving the coursework beforehand (Appendix A, Section 5.00).
Step Advancement
The rules for moving down the steps of the salary schedule are much simpler. Appendix A, Section 4.00 states that as long as you are in “paid status” for 75% of a school year (75% of one year is 138 of 184 workdays), you advance to the next step each year you work until you reach the top step (step 17; equivalent to 17 years of service). "Paid status" includes time spent on paid leave such as sick leave, both full and half pay, and on personal necessity leave, which is just converted sick leave. Certain types of other leaves, such as military leave, sabbaticals, exchange leaves, professional study leave, or leave to go work as an approved consultant for another governmental agency, will also grant salary advancement credit. Unpaid leaves do not count towards step advancement credit. And finally, any time a part-time employee works at least 138 days over two school years, they can combine those two years of service for credit to advance one step on the salary schedule. For employees on 186 or 191 base calendar years (Nurses and School Psychs), the 75% threshold will be a higher number of days (139.5 and 143.25 respectively). Some ECE teachers also work up to 248 days, so you will have to run a simple calculation to find out what 75% of your work year is. Again, check the contract for specifics.
As a final note, some probationary employees will recall that there is a similar "75%" rule under state law. The law states that if you are physically present for 75% of the total number of work days in each work year while you are on probation, you advance to the next year of probation, and then on to permanent status. This statutory rule about advancing from one employment status to another is different from the contractual rule about salary step advancement. The statutory rule is about passing probation and changing your employment status from probationary to permanent, while the contractual rule is about getting paid more as you gain more teaching experience. The key takeaway is that the statutory rule does not count any time you spend on leave as credit towards time served at work, while the contractual rule gives you credit for salary advancement purposes while you are on some types of leave. The two rules operate under different enabling documents (Education Code versus the SDEA/SDUSD contract), and should not be conflated.
SOURCE: SDEA Contract, Appendices A, B, C, F & G