Joint Statement: Children belong with their families, not in federal custody
Our demands are clear. And they are not negotiable when it comes to the safety and humanity of children.
As educators, we are horrified to hear that one of our third-grade students in San Diego Unified has been detained by ICE this week.
First, return this eight-year-old child to his family. We demand that the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, ICE, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement take immediate action to safely reunify this child with his uncle or another appropriate family caregiver. His family must receive timely information, meaningful access to legal counsel, and a clear reunification process. Every unnecessary day of separation is another day of harm.
Second, stop separating children from their families through immigration enforcement when safe family care is available. Children should not be placed in federal facilities simply because of their family's immigration circumstances. Family unity, child welfare, and due process must come before detention and removal decisions.
Third, establish enforceable protections for children and schools. We demand clear federal procedures that protect students' access to education, preserve family connections, and prevent unnecessary displacement from their schools and communities. We call on San Diego Unified and local officials to work with educators, classified professionals, families, and community organizations to strengthen school safety plans, family notification procedures, and safe passage protections.
Fourth, transparency and accountability are not optional. Federal agencies must provide meaningful oversight, timely reunification reviews, and public reporting on the number of children separated from family caregivers, the length of those separations, and the outcomes, while protecting children's identities and privacy. Government agencies must be held accountable for decisions that cause preventable harm.
Fifth, protect the rights and safety of educators and classified professionals who stand with their students. No school employee should face retaliation for lawfully advocating for a child, reporting safety concerns, supporting affected families, or exercising their protected rights.
Our solidarity does not end at the schoolhouse door.
Union educators in SDEA, CSEA San Diego Paraeducators Chapter 759, and CSEA San Diego OTBS Chapter 788 stand together in recognizing that the safety, dignity, and humanity of our students are inseparable from the work we do every day.
Our members teach these children. We feed them, support them, comfort them, and help create the stability they deserve. We see what happens when fear enters a classroom and when a child is missing from their seat.
We also recognize that educators and classified professionals cannot be expected to repair the trauma created by government decisions while those responsible remain unaccountable.
We are three unions representing different classifications of education workers, but the children we serve are the same children. Their families are our school communities. Their safety is our shared concern.
An injury to one is an injury to all. That includes our children. That includes their families. That includes our communities.
We demand that federal officials in DHS and HHS act immediately to safely reunify this child with his family. We expect our elected representatives at every level to demand answers, exercise their authority, and insist on accountability. And we urge our communities to reject the normalization of family separation and the detention of children.
We are not asking for special treatment.
We are demanding that children be treated as children. That families be treated as families. And that the government be held accountable for the harm caused by its actions.
Our schools must remain places of learning, belonging, and safety. Our communities must be places where families can live without the constant fear of being torn apart.
We will not be silent while children are harmed. We will not look away because the issue is politically uncomfortable. And we will not allow immigration status to become an excuse for cruelty.
The measure of our humanity is not how we treat the powerful. It is how we protect those who are most vulnerable.
Children are not bargaining chips. Families are not disposable. And no child should have to suffer to satisfy a political agenda.
Return this child to his family. Protect every child. Hold those responsible accountable.
And to everyone watching this happen, silence is a choice. So is solidarity.
We know which side of history we intend to stand on.
In solidarity,
Monique Barrett
President, San Diego Education Association (SDEA)
Miguel Arellano
President, CSEA San Diego Paraeducators Chapter 759
Dawn Basques
President, CSEA San Diego OTBS Chapter 788
Join us:
Rally at the courthouse to stand up for our 8-year-old student who was separated from his family there last week:
Thursday, November 12
Gather at 10 AM, speakers at 11 AM
880 Front St
Stand with workers - Boycott Starbucks!
At this week's Rep Council, SDEA member representatives from across our union heard from local union baristas about their fight and voted unanimously to support their boycott.
Starbucks baristas have been fighting for nearly five whole years for a fair union contract that would cost Starbucks less than one day of sales. It's time to impact those sales and force them to listen!
Starbucks flagrant disregard for labor law isn’t just an attack on their own workers. It’s an attack on all working people When union baristas – backed by a coalition of allies – prove that we can take on the biggest bosses and win despite rampant union busting, it will put all employers on notice about the power of working people standing up together.
Learn more and sign the pledge at BoycottStarbucks.net!
Protecting Shared Decision-Making in TK-12 Technology Use
SDEA supports purposeful, developmentally appropriate technology use that strengthens learning, relationships, and student wellness. But Districtwide restrictions cannot replace educators’ professional judgment or ignore the different needs and resources of our schools.
Our position is straightforward: Technology decisions, along with all instructional decisions, must include the voices of educators and families. Site Governance Teams (SGTs) provide a structure for shared decision-making, ensuring that educators and families have a meaningful say in decisions affecting their school communities.
SDEA’s Six Demands
1. Protect instructional decision-making. Technology must support teaching, not replace it. Educators need the flexibility to use digital tools for differentiated instruction, intervention, and small-group or one-on-one support. Restrictions must be based on instructional purpose, not screen time alone.
2. Respect developmental differences across TK–12. A kindergartner, a fifth grader, and a high school student do not have the same needs. Guidance must allow age-appropriate, student-centered decisions rather than a one-size-fits-all rule.
3. Guarantee equitable access. Students’ access to devices, internet, programs, staffing, and instructional space varies at home and across school sites. The District must identify and address those inequities before limiting access or changing delivery models.
4. Protect accessibility and individual needs. Technology may be essential for students with IEPs or 504 plans, multilingual learners, and students requiring intervention. All legally required accommodations, assistive technology, communication tools, and services must remain available without delay.
5. Acknowledge realistic workload in all timeline decisions. Lesson redesign, alternative materials, device management, troubleshooting, and training to effectively implement changes all take time. The District must provide adequate resources and support before imposing changes that affect educators’ work.
6. Honor SGT authority and meaningful participation from the whole community. Each school’s SGT must use its established process to determine instructional technology practices based on its students, staff, and resources. Educators, families, and students must have a voice. Two seats for SDEA on a District committee cannot substitute for TK–12 input across schools and instructional settings.
What we expect next to meaningfully incorporate these demands:
- Pause one-size-fits-all restrictions until more thorough feedback can be gathered from the broader community (representing diverse needs across our schools.)
- Provide guidance, discussion questions, and implementation options to support informed SGT decision-making, while preserving each school community’s authority to determine how “Learner-Centered Technology Use” is implemented at its site.
- Complete equity, accessibility, and workload reviews and identify needed supports.
- Meet with SDEA representatives to respond to the concerns raised, revise guidance together, and ensure that educator and site feedback shaped the decisions.
This letter is not SDEA approval of any proposed guidance or its implementation. As a democratic union, we need the insight and input of all educators, and SGTs provide the structure we need for individual site decisions that meet individual site needs.
Our members fought for shared decision-making so decisions are made with school communities, not for them. We are ready to collaborate, but that collaboration must be real. We need to get this right, not simply get it done.
Monique Barrett, M.Ed.
President, San Diego Education Association
September 2026 SpEd Caseload Overage Payments (Appeal by Dec 14)
For caseload overages in September 2026, penalty payments should have been paid on the October payroll.
September 2026 SpEd Stipend Exhibit: Check the District’s data on your caseload and stipends owed.
September 2026 Appeals Form: See an error that would change your payment? Fill out an appeal form for the month the error occurred. Deadline: December 14, 2026 at 11:59 PM PST
Know Your Rights - Ed Specialist Caseload Penalty Payments:
Understand the penalty payments and process with this KYR flyer and on this web page.
Nov 28 Book Swap
Honoring Dolores Huerta
Statement from SDEA President Monique Barrett Honoring Dolores Huerta
As president of the San Diego Education Association, my heart is with Dolores Huerta’s family and loved ones, with the organizers who stood beside her, and with every person who found courage and hope through her life.
Some losses reach across generations. This is one of them.
Dolores co-founded the United Farm Workers and gave the movement its rallying cry, “Sí, se puede.” She helped working people whom others ignored and exploited recognize their own power. Their voices mattered. Their children mattered. Together, they demanded more and won.
She was also an educator. She watched children arrive at school hungry and understood that their suffering called for a response beyond the classroom. Loving those children meant standing with their families and confronting the conditions that kept them in poverty.
Educators know that truth. We see what our students carry through our doors. We cannot claim to care about children while remaining silent about what harms them.
As a Black woman, an educator, and a union president, I carry that responsibility into this moment. I want us to honor Dolores with the honesty and courage she asked of the world.
Speaking at Chapman University in 2018, she reminded us, “We are all Africans of different shades and colors.”
We are related. We belong to one another. Our histories differ, and our burdens weigh differently. Our shared humanity calls us to confront anti-Blackness, racism, and exploitation, including within our own communities and our own movement.
Unity must be strong enough to hold the truth. It makes room for people to name the harm they have experienced and calls on us to act. Solidarity becomes real when we stand beside someone whose struggle we could choose to ignore.
Those who profit from division want working people blaming one another. They want us to see an immigrant family as a threat, a neighbor’s rights as a loss of our own, and another community’s suffering as somebody else’s problem. That division keeps workers underpaid, schools underfunded, and communities unheard.
We refuse it.
Every child deserves safety, belonging, and a fully funded public education. Every worker deserves dignity, fair pay, and a voice. Every family deserves to live with respect. These commitments belong together, and together we have the power to win them.
To those who hold power: honoring Dolores Huerta requires more than praising her courage after her death. Listen to the workers organizing today. Fund the schools our children attend. Respect the educators and staff who serve them. Answer for decisions that leave families struggling.
Our children’s humanity is not negotiable. Neither is ours.
Here in San Diego, we can honor her through the truth we teach, the relationships we build, the contracts we fight for, and the people we refuse to leave behind. Every member has a place in that work. Every act of courage can help someone else find theirs.
Today we grieve, and we make room for the sorrow of losing someone who gave so much of herself. We also hold hope because the people she inspired are still here, still teaching, still organizing, still raising children who deserve a more just world.
We are still here. We have one another. We carry this work forward.
May her family feel surrounded by love. May her memory deepen our compassion, strengthen our resolve, and move us to act.
Expresamos nuestro más sentido pésame a su familia y a las comunidades campesinas a las que dedicó su vida.
Rest in power, Dolores Huerta. Thank you for helping generations believe in their own power. We honor yours by using ours.
Sí, se puede.
Shoulder to shoulder. Member by member. Site by site.
Monique Barrett, M.Ed.
President, San Diego Education Association
EJC Coalition Endorses: YES on Prop 3!
Our community partners in the Education Justice Coalition have endorsed a YES on Prop 3! Educators & communities are standing up together to protect essential school funding. If Prop 3 fails, our public schools face BIG cuts.
✊ Learn more about the Education Justice Coalition at sdea.net/ejc
🗳️ Did you vote early already? Still filling out your ballot? Get information on voting locations at sdvote.com.
🍎 See local endorsements in the SDEA voter guide!
A Message from Your President
You Matter. We Matter. This Is OUR Union.
By Monique Barrett, M.Ed., President, San Diego Education Association
“Our strength is our willingness to stand together, even when we think differently.”
We hold different political views, beliefs, and values. We will disagree at times, and that is healthy. Some believe politics belongs outside education.
I respect that perspective, and I know the decisions affecting our classrooms, our students, and our livelihoods are often made far beyond our school sites.
Politics is education. And education is politics.
Every day, elected officials make decisions about funding, staffing, resources, and working conditions in schools they may have never stepped foot in. Those decisions shape our profession, our livelihoods, and the children we serve.
That is why we engage.
After more than 23 years in education, I know what it means to walk into a classroom and give everything you have, sometimes more than you have, because your students need you. I have worked alongside colleagues whose experiences, values, and political beliefs differ from mine, and I have learned that we can care about one another across those differences. We can recognize together that our working conditions and our students’ learning conditions are connected.
As your president, I represent educators across the political spectrum. Whether you are conservative, progressive, somewhere in between, or simply tired of politics, you belong in this union.
I invite you to listen, learn, question, and examine the consequences of the decisions we make. Our responsibility to children stays constant, whatever our personal convictions.
Every child deserves to be safe, respected, seen, valued, and welcomed. Every child deserves to thrive.
And so do educators.
Let’s talk about funding.
Our paychecks, raises, fully paid family healthcare, benefits, staffing, resources, and working conditions all connect to education funding and to what we negotiate and protect collectively.
Workloads keep growing, staffing runs short, and our students need more support. The fight for better working conditions and the fight for the resources that sustain them are one fight.
What we have today, we fought for, negotiated, and won.
Our fully paid family healthcare, contractual protections, due process rights, and the ability to advocate for safer working conditions come from generations of educators organizing, bargaining, and standing together.
These protections matter when an educator faces an unfair administrator, when workloads become unmanageable, when our professional judgment is challenged, or when we need to put our families and our own well-being first.
Educators who came before us organized so that those who followed would have something better. We honor them by protecting what they built and continuing to build for those who come after us.
What we maintain tomorrow depends on what we protect today.
Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.
Proposition 3 and the future of school funding
Proposition 3 addresses the continuation of higher income tax rates on California’s highest earners, a source of revenue supporting public education. The measure raises an important question about how California will sustain the resources our schools and students need in the years ahead.
For educators, funding is never just a number on a spreadsheet. It is connected to staffing, manageable workloads, student services, classroom resources, and our ability to negotiate and protect the working conditions our students depend on.
Your vote is part of this work.
California’s election for Superintendent of Public Instruction shows why our engagement matters. The office is nonpartisan, the candidates bring distinct educational priorities, and the person elected will make decisions with real consequences for our classrooms.
The California Teachers Association (CTA) has endorsed Richard Barrera for Superintendent of Public Instruction. CTA points to priorities including fully funded classrooms, smaller class sizes, student mental health supports, and better pay and healthcare for educators. These issues matter because the decisions made at the state level reach into every classroom and affect the people who teach and learn in them.
The State Superintendent provides statewide educational leadership, carries out education policy, and holds oversight responsibilities in California’s public education system.
As you review the candidates, look at their records. Ask what their approach to public education looks like, where they stand on the use and oversight of public education dollars, including charter schools, and how they approach curriculum, access to books, and educators’ professional judgment. Ask what their policies mean for student safety, dignity, privacy, and belonging, and for the educators who serve those students every day.
The SDEA Voter Guide gives you a starting point.
We may reach different conclusions about candidates, propositions, or political strategies. Every one of us still has a place in the larger work of protecting public education. We owe one another conversations grounded in facts, respect, and a willingness to listen.
Make your plan to vote by November 3, 2026.
- Every active registered California voter receives a mail ballot. Mail yours as soon as possible. Mail ballots must be postmarked by November 3, 2026, but the Postal Service recommends mailing your completed ballot before Election Day.
- The online voter registration deadline has passed, but you can still register in person... including on Election Day! See more about conditional voter registration.
- You can also return your ballot at an official drop box or your county elections office, or vote in person. Early in-person voting is available at designated locations, with dates and hours varying by county. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day.
- Look up your sample ballot, polling place, early voting locations, and ballot drop boxes at sdvote.com.
To our site representatives: leadership carries responsibility. If a particular campaign does not fit your capacity, help identify someone who can coordinate it. Build a team. Share the responsibility. Reach out to your SDEA organizing team for support.
Pass the baton. Keep it moving.
And to every educator: You matter in this work.
Your voice, experience, perspective, and participation matter. Everybody has something to contribute.
Start with one conversation. Talk with a colleague about what matters to them. Attend a site meeting. Connect with your site representative. Find an issue or campaign where you can contribute. If you want help finding a place to begin, reach out to SDEA.
Imagine what we could accomplish if each of us committed to doing something.
Our children are watching us. They watch how we handle disagreements, treat one another, and respond when things get difficult.
We teach students about respect, belonging, courage, critical thinking, and collective responsibility. We teach those principles by practicing them.
We can disagree. We can challenge decisions. We can hold leadership accountable, including me. Our differences make us stronger when we stay beside one another.
I want SDEA to be a union where members ask difficult questions, respectfully challenge one another, and participate as their full selves.
This is OUR union.
When we sit at the table, we help shape the decisions. When we organize, we strengthen our collective voice. When we listen to one another, even through disagreement, we move forward together.
So find your place in the work. Ask questions. Have conversations. Organize. Support one another.
If we want to go far, we go together. I want us to go far, and I want us to win. Together.
Every win we earn, we earn together.
Shoulder to shoulder. Member by member. Site by site.
Monique Barrett, M.Ed.
President, San Diego Education Association
Oct 29: Keep Our Communities Safe!
Come connect & strategize with fellow educators & community allies to organize and protect our school communities:
📅 Thurs, Oct 29, 2026
⏰ 5:00 dinner, 5:30 - 7:00 PM training
📍 Location shared after RSVP
🖍️ Childcare available
🔗 RSVP: https://bit.ly/rsvp102926
*Form is encrypted so is a little slow to load!
Letters in Solidarity: The Courage to Care
The Courage to Care
Holding Care for Our Children, Families, Communities, One Another, and Ourselves
Dear SDEA Family,
Somewhere today, an educator noticed something was different about a child.
Maybe it was the way they walked into the room. The smile that wasn't there. The unusually quiet voice. Or the way they lingered just a little longer before taking their seat.
Nothing extraordinary happened. There was no announcement, no meeting, no recognition.
Just an adult who noticed.
And a child who, perhaps for the first time that day, felt seen.
I wonder how many moments like that happen in our schools every day.
The teacher who stays a few minutes to listen. The counselor who makes room for one more conversation. The paraeducator who recognizes that a student is becoming overwhelmed before anyone else notices. The colleague who quietly checks on another colleague because something doesn't seem right.
So much of what makes a school a community happens in moments nobody records.
And yet, those moments can change someone's entire day.
Sometimes, even their life.
I've been thinking about that kind of care lately. The kind that isn't written into a lesson plan or measured on an evaluation. The kind that asks us to pay attention, to remain curious, and to remember that the person in front of us has a life we may know very little about.
Especially now.
Because there is a heaviness in our world that does not disappear when the school bell rings.
Children hear things. They notice when the adults they love are worried. They sense when something has changed at home, in their neighborhood, or in the world around them.
Some are carrying fears about whether their families will remain together. Some are grieving. Some are struggling to belong. Others are simply trying to understand a world that can be confusing, unkind, and frightening.
And many are carrying things they have never told us.
As educators, we cannot fix everything happening in their lives.
But we can decide what happens when they walk through our doors.
We can decide whether they encounter another person who judges them before knowing them, or someone willing to see beyond what is immediately visible.
After more than two decades as an educator, much of that time working with students with disabilities, I have learned that some of the most important things we do begin with what we are willing to notice.
A change in behavior. A look of frustration. A student who has stopped trying. A child who needs someone to believe there is more to them than the difficulty they are experiencing.
And as a mother and now a Gigi, I understand that from another side of the classroom door.
I know what it means to love a child so deeply that you wish you could protect them from every hurt the world might bring. To trust that when they are beyond your reach, someone else will recognize their worth.
It is a tremendous act of trust to place someone you love in the care of another person.
And every day, families place that trust in us.
Before a child is a student, they are a human being.
Before the IEP, the test score, the behavior referral, the attendance record, or the label someone has attached to them, there is a child with a story still being written.
And we get to be part of that story.
What an extraordinary responsibility.
What an extraordinary privilege.
I also know how difficult it can be to hold onto that perspective when we're exhausted, overwhelmed, understaffed, or trying to meet more needs than any one person reasonably can.
There are days when patience feels harder to find. When the student who needs the most attention arrives at the very moment we have the least to give.
Those are human moments, too.
We don't always respond the way we wish we had.
I certainly haven't gotten every moment right.
But I hope we never lose the willingness to ask ourselves whether we saw the whole child or only the behavior in front of us.
Whether we made room for dignity while holding expectations.
Whether the child left our care feeling smaller or feeling that tomorrow could be different.
And when we realize we missed something, I hope we give ourselves the opportunity to make it right.
That matters.
So does the way we see families.
I think sometimes we forget how vulnerable it can feel to be on the other side of a conversation about your child.
The parent who seems frustrated may be frightened. The caregiver who keeps asking questions may be searching for reassurance. The family who missed the meeting may be managing circumstances we know nothing about.
And sometimes families have been hurt by the very institutions we are asking them to trust.
That history doesn't disappear simply because we have good intentions.
We may not always agree. There will be difficult conversations, and there should be. Our professional responsibilities matter, and so does our right to be treated with respect.
But I hope we can approach families remembering that love doesn't always sound calm, fear doesn't always look like fear, and frustration is not always a rejection of partnership.
Sometimes people need to know we are listening before they can hear anything we have to say.
And sometimes we need to hear something uncomfortable before we understand what they have been trying to tell us.
The same is true of our communities.
I've been thinking about the families living with uncertainty and fear right now. About children hearing people speak of their neighborhoods, their identities, and the people they love as though their suffering is somehow acceptable.
I wonder what it feels like for a child to hear the place they call home spoken about with contempt.
Or to wonder whether the adults around them believe their family belongs.
Our schools are part of those communities. Their joys, fears, histories, struggles, and hopes are woven into the lives of the children we teach.
We cannot separate the child from the world they live in.
And we should never ask a child to leave their humanity at the classroom door.
This week has reminded me how quickly words spoken far from a classroom can find their way into one.
A child may not understand every political debate or policy decision, but they recognize when something feels uncertain at home. They notice conversations that stop when they enter a room. They hear the worry in a parent's voice. They sense when the adults they depend on are carrying something difficult, even when they don't fully understand what it is.
And I think about the educators trying to find the right words when a child asks a question they cannot easily answer.
Sometimes there are no perfect words.
Sometimes all we can offer in that moment is our presence, our willingness to listen, and the reassurance that the child in front of us matters.
That matters more than we may ever know.
And while we cannot promise that everything outside our school doors will be okay, we can work together to make sure that inside them, every child is treated with dignity, every family is welcomed with respect, and no one is made to feel that their humanity is up for debate.
Care, in moments like these, may require courage.
The courage to speak when something is wrong. To stand beside a family when they feel alone. To challenge decisions that harm people. To recognize that we can disagree deeply with someone's choices while still refusing to strip them of their humanity.
Caring does not mean accepting injustice.
It does not mean pretending harm hasn't happened.
And it certainly does not mean that accountability disappears.
Sometimes the most caring thing we can do is tell the truth, even when the truth makes people uncomfortable.
But how we tell that truth matters, too.
I want us to be people who can stand firmly in our convictions without forgetting the human beings standing across from us.
And I want us to extend that care to the people standing beside us.
Because I know our schools are filled with people carrying things we cannot see.
The new educator wondering whether they're good enough.
The experienced teacher who still loves teaching but is tired of everything surrounding it.
The Special Education teacher trying to meet the needs of every student while navigating responsibilities that never seem to end.
The paraeducator whose relationship with a child has become a source of safety and trust.
The counselor or mental health provider who carries difficult stories home.
The classified union sibling whose work is essential to the life of the school.
The colleague who has become quieter lately.
The person who always says they're fine.
Maybe they are.
Maybe they aren't.
And maybe we won't know unless we ask.
Not every difficult relationship can be repaired with kindness. Some situations require boundaries, intervention, accountability, and meaningful change. I believe that deeply.
But I also believe we can become so accustomed to managing our own pressures that we forget the person beside us may be doing the same.
We do not have to understand every part of someone's experience to care about what happens to them.
We do not have to share a job title, a bargaining unit, or even the same perspective to recognize that their dignity matters.
And when our labor siblings are fighting for the respect, safety, and working conditions they deserve, their struggle should matter to us.
Because care that only extends as far as our own interests is too small for the communities we are trying to build.
There is another part of this conversation I don't want us to overlook.
Us.
The people doing the caring.
I wonder how many educators are reading this after a day when they gave everything they had and still went home thinking about what they didn't get done.
How many are worried about a student right now.
How many are trying to be present for their own children, partners, parents, or families while their minds are still somewhere at school.
How many are carrying grief, financial worries, health concerns, or responsibilities that nobody at work knows about.
And how many have become so good at being the person everyone depends on that they've forgotten what it feels like to be cared for themselves.
I understand that more than I sometimes want to admit.
I know how easy it is to encourage someone else to rest while convincing ourselves that we have just one more thing to finish.
One more call.
One more problem to solve.
One more person who needs us.
And I am learning that there will always be one more thing.
Our humanity does not disappear because we chose a profession rooted in service.
We deserve tenderness, too.
We deserve patience when we're struggling, space to grieve when we're hurting, and permission to experience joy without feeling guilty about the work waiting for us.
We deserve to have lives beyond our jobs.
And we deserve working conditions that make those lives possible.
Because I am not going to tell an exhausted educator that the solution is simply to take a bubble bath, practice mindfulness, or find a better way to manage their time.
Rest matters. Boundaries matter. Mental health matters.
But no amount of individual self-care can compensate for a system that continually asks people to give more than they have.
We need adequate staffing. Manageable workloads. Safe schools. Respect for our professional judgment. Time to do our work well. And systems that support the people who support our children.
That is part of what we fight for as a union.
Not just a better contract, but the conditions that allow educators and students to flourish.
We cannot build schools rooted in care while treating the well-being of the people inside them as an afterthought.
And we cannot expect educators to carry that responsibility alone.
I think about what becomes possible when care is shared.
When a colleague notices someone struggling and offers support.
When a family feels comfortable enough to tell us what they really need.
When a student knows that making a mistake will not cost them their dignity.
When our union siblings know we will stand beside them, even when their struggle is not our own.
When we are willing to ask for help and know that doing so will not be mistaken for weakness.
Those may sound like small things.
But I have come to believe that some of the biggest changes begin with the smallest decisions we make about how we treat one another.
I don't expect us to get everything right.
I know I won't.
There will be days when we are tired, impatient, distracted, or overwhelmed. Days when we miss something important or wish we could take back what we said.
But there will also be another opportunity to listen. Another chance to apologize. Another moment to notice someone we overlooked.
And there will be opportunities to laugh, celebrate, find joy, and remember that our lives are so much bigger than the challenges in front of us.
I want that for us.
I want our children to experience schools where they are loved, valued, accepted, challenged, and understood.
I want families to know they are welcomed as partners, not treated as problems to manage.
I want our communities to know that we see their humanity and that their children are precious to us.
I want the people working in our schools to know that their contributions matter, whether or not anyone notices them.
And I want us to remember that we matter, too.
Not because of how much we accomplish.
Not because of how many people depend on us.
Not because we have managed to hold everything together.
Simply because we are human.
I still have tremendous hope for what we can build together.
Not because I believe the work will become easy, but because I know the extraordinary people doing it.
I've seen what happens when someone refuses to give up on a child.
I've seen families find their voices.
I've seen educators stand together when it would have been easier to look away.
And I've seen how one person choosing compassion can change the direction of someone else's day.
That is worth protecting.
That is worth building upon.
And that is worth fighting for.
Sometimes care is the very reason we fight.
So as we move through the days ahead, I hope we notice a little more. Listen a little longer. Extend a little more grace where it is needed, and find the courage to speak when something is wrong.
I hope we remember that the person in front of us has a story we may not know.
And I hope that when the person who needs compassion is the one looking back at us in the mirror, we offer it there, too.
Our children are counting on us.
But we are also counting on one another.
And I believe we can be there for each other.
With care. With courage. With humanity.
In Solidarity,
Monique Barrett, M.Ed.
President, San Diego Education Association
Until next time,
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of one another.
And please remember, you deserve to be cared for, too.
I'll see you out there.