Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) has dolled out over $6 million in vacation time payout to their administrative employees, causing pushback from the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) as they prepare for a possible strike.
The District has adopted a “use it or lose it” vacation policy in which administrative employees are required to either use accrued vacation time or cash it in for the salary they would have made during this vacation time.
Alex Barrios, a spokesperson for the District said on the implementation of this policy, “The goal [is] to comply with what the law requires us to pay out for unused vacation time, but in the most cost-effective way.”
Such policy has resulted in over $6 million paid out to administrators across the District. McClatchy’s Principal, Peter Lambert, received over $70,000. The largest payout reached over $160,000.
Barrios added, “the District has reduced its financial liability by $4 million and will be saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year thereafter,” because of the payouts.
According to the District, the accrued vacation time became costly. In a statement released by the District, Superintendent Jorge Aguilar said, “When employees accrue vacation every year and do not use their vacation time for many years, the cost to the District of that accrued and unused vacation time increases every year…This costs the District more money.”
McClatchy teachers and SCTA raised questions surrounding this policy, highlighting the District’s current financial crisis, wherein SCUSD is projected to run out of money by November of this year.
“The District is claiming poverty. It boggles the mind. Every teacher is demoralized by this,” said one of McClatchy’s SCTA representatives, Lori Jablonski. “Unused vacation time can be handled multiple ways. Including, instructing people to take their vacation time. That’s the simplest. There’s structured ways you can do buyouts, from what I understand, to minimize the cost at any particular time.”
Aguilar also stated that administrators are now no longer able to accrue such large amounts of vacation time. “This reduction in vacation days will help the district save money. In addition, non-represented management employees are now required to either use or cash out any vacation carryover above 15 days to further reduce the district’s financial liability and lessen the cost of vacation benefits so more resources are available for our students,” said Barrios.
SCTA has complaints on the method these vacation payouts were distributed. “As with a lot of laws, the district has a lot of leeway as to how they’re going to comply with the law,” said Jablonski. “It’s up to the judgement of the district leadership and the school board to determine what is the proper and most effective way to comply with the law given the financial troubles that they are experiencing.”
“It’s hard to reconcile the District’s budget fiasco with their refusal to address this bureaucratic bloat and scandal,” said SCTA in a statement to teachers across the District.
In response to SCTA’s complaints, Barrios said, “The Sacramento City Teachers Association has been the most vocal critic of the District’s compliance with unused vacation time laws. If the SCTA disagrees with the law, they should advocate at the state level to change it. The District will continue to conduct its business in compliance with the law.”
“This may be legal but I would argue that given the peril that they are claiming that they are in, this is not an ethical, I would not even say it’s a moral decision, that they made. They had a lot of room there for how they wanted to handle this, and this is how they decided to handle it. So they need to accept the criticism of this and they need take responsibility for it,” said Jablonski.
This comes during a tense time between SCTA and the District. After agreeing to and signing an agreement with SCTA to avoid a strike last year, the District has backtracked over a portion of the contract. Disagreement over what was an agreed upon scheduled salary bumps for teachers and guaranteed reduced class sizes have resulted in the District filing suit against SCTA.
“If you have a disagreement over the language of a contract you go to arbitration, which is well established in labor law. So what the district did in trying to sue us was virtually unprecedented,” said Jablonski.
Elected SCTA representatives unanimously chose to vote on a possible strike because of the issue. McClatchy teachers will be voting on a strike at the upcoming staff meeting in early March.