Sacramento City Unified teachers have announced that they will strike on Wednesday November 8th, 2017, if an agreement isn’t reached between the SCTA (Sacramento City Teachers Association) and the Sacramento City Unified School District.
According to Larry Hopper, Secretary of the SCTA, “around 3,000” people showed up to a rally outside the Serna Center on Thursday afternoon, before the school district’s board meeting took place.
Smaller class sizes. Making arts and music available to all students. An increase of school nurses and psychologists to national standards. Those are only a few things that the SCTA has asked for.
The district has rejected these proposals through more than a year of bargaining with the SCTA. Both side blame each other publicly for the delay of an agreement.
What would a strike mean for students and parents? Should parents keep their children home from school? Will there be enough substitutes to keep the schools open?
Nikki Milevsky, mother of two and 1st vice president of the SCTA, said “I am very concerned about the safety of students in our schools during the strike. The district does not seem very prepared, and I am not sending my kids to school.”
“The vast majority of around 600 substitutes will be on strike,” said Milevsky.
“The district is recruiting anyone they can find, and they are offering $500 a day. They don’t even have to have credentials,” said SCTA president David Fisher.
Schools are not legally able to hire substitutes without the proper certification. So, in the event of a substitute shortage, students would likely be supervised by campus staff in a central area like the library or the cafeteria.
