Bargaining Update - February 5

Yesterday was our fourteenth bargaining session. If you feel like you’ve gotten a lot of bargaining updates this week, that’s because you have! We’ve scheduled a lot of extra sessions this month, trying to reach an agreement on as much as possible. Unfortunately, this session had very little meaningful movement. Especially when the District’s team continues to say that they want to do anything possible to avoid our scheduled ULP strike, we were disappointed at what they proposed today for Special Education in particular. It’s one thing to say you want to fix Special Education staffing. It’s another thing to get concrete solutions on paper. Our students and educators deserve more than empty promises… they need real, concrete solutions. Instead, today the District offered us more of the same.

Not enough movement on Special Education:

Part of yesterday’s discussion focused on future collaboration. The District described plans to form a joint workgroup with labor representatives (from SDEA and other unions), parents, and administrators to identify needs across Special Education and advocate together for long-term funding. Joint collaboration and shared advocacy matter… but they are not enough. We need concrete solutions in our next contract. The District offered a package proposal they said would resolve the issues raised in our Unfair Labor Practice over Special Education caseload overages. Read the entire package proposal here, which includes:

• Article 29: Special Education
• Appendix A: Salary Schedule & Rules
• SPED Caseload Grievance Settlement 
• SPED Credential Pathways

There were modest improvements in this package, such as a small increase for the middle-tier caseload overage stipend. But the District still fails to address the core issue: Financially incentivizing leaving vacancies unfilled, educators overwhelmed, and students without services. We’ve proposed more enforceable caseload caps where educators are automatically paid whenever they go beyond contractual limits, rather than waiting years for union-wide grievances to be settled. We’ve even included a ten-day grace period for the District to gauge staffing needs and allocate needed staff. With the District’s current proposal, they could overload educators for free for three months with no compensation at all. This proposal dismally fails to break the cycle of caseload overages. It also doesn’t address other urgent issues members face every day, like assessment workloads, and inadequate support with staff stretched thin by bare-bones allocations. Although settling existing grievances and creating credential pathways matter, we can’t accept a proposal that locks us into the same cycle of vacancies, grievances, delayed settlements, and overwhelmed educators unable to give students the support they deserve.

Some Tentative Agreements:

We reached tentative agreement on a few articles:

• We officially finalized Article 35: Safe and Supportive Communities, our new equity article with protections for our community members targeted by the current federal administration… on the same day that educators and community partners in the Education Justice Coalition turned out at the Federal courthouse to protest the ongoing impact of ICE terror on our school communities.

• We accepted the District’s final tweaks to Article 5: Employee Organization Rights, which ensures new employees get compensated for attending orientations.

• While we’re still negotiating other salary appendices, we did finalize Appendix C: Military Science Instructors' Salary Schedule & Rules.

As a reminder, these tentative agreements are the individual pieces of the contract that both teams have reached agreement on. When all open articles are agreed upon, members will get to vote on whether to ratify the entire contract. You can see all those tentative agreements linked on our proposal tracker. If the full document isn’t linked yet, it’s because the document is still being signed by both teams, but you can always view the last proposal of each article for the language that was agreed upon.

Still Negotiating:

Wages

Last session, the District’s salary proposal included language that said in essence that they would pay the specified wages after they get the funds… to anyone still employed at that time. We know that we’re working with very tight budgets right now, and that our proposals continue to push the District close to their limit on legal reserves. Especially with the state deferring funding to future years, we might need to choose between deferred raises or smaller raises. With this in mind, yesterday we proposed a 3% raise for the current school year and another 3% next school year, to be paid once the District gets the funds. This would give them the wiggle room necessary to give educators a raise above the state COLA, which is confirmed 2.3% for this school year and estimated 2.41% for next school year. Read our full proposal for Article 7: Wages: 2025-2026 & 2026-2027.

And more:

Our team shared a variety of other counterproposals yesterday:

• We’re standing firm that ECE TK co-teachers deserve to keep their stipend in Appendix B: Early Childhood Education Programs Salary Schedule & Rules. We also proposed clarification of the summer school workday for ECE teachers in Appendix E.
• We’re still proposing more fair Summer School staffing in Article 17: Summer School/Intersession Hours & Conditions of Employment and Appendix E: Summer School Intersession Salary Schedule & Rules.
• We’re continuing to propose expanded, clarified, and fairer leave policies in Article 10: Leave Policies.
• We’ve proposed limits to combo classroom assignments in Article 13: Class Size.
• We’ve proposed a significant Visiting Teacher pay increase for Special Education assignments that are hard to staff in Article 32: Visiting Teachers, packaged with Appendix D: Visiting Teacher Salary Schedule & Rules.

What’s Next?

We have our next bargaining session scheduled for February 12… mark your calendars and wear red in solidarity! The District keeps saying they want to fix Special Education staffing. Will those promises finally make it onto paper next week? We Can’t Wait for the District to decide that it’s urgent to address the SpEd staffing crisis in our district - we need to leave them with no other choice but to do the right thing for our students and our colleagues. As SDEA union educators, we must stand firm and be ready to show up! Watch your email for further updates, and - most importantly - attend your next union meeting!

See our tracker for all proposals exchanged so far and all tentative agreements, with links to read the full text of each.

In Solidarity,

SDEA’s Bargaining Team

Kyle Weinberg, SDEA President, Ed. Specialist: Mild/Moderate, English and History Teacher; Laurie Bailon, Social Science & 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

by Sara Kennedy