By Brandon Chan, Staff Writer and Eleanor Love, News and Sports Editor
On March 8th, the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) voted to authorize a strike as a result of the Sacramento City Unified School District’s (SCUSD’s) proposed plan to cut health benefits, staff positions, no defined workday, and other district rights. The SCTA vote was 95 percent in support of the authorization.
The vote took place from March 8 to March 10. The Service Employee International Union (SEIU), which covers all non-educational staff in the district, voted 97 percent in favor of the authorization as well. While this vote does not directly trigger a strike, it allows union leaders to call a strike in the future if they see fit.
According to the SCTA, the primary motivation for this vote revolves around a staffing crisis in the district. In 2019, SCUSD unveiled a contract proposal that has gone unchanged since. The proposal includes the district’s right to change health insurance benefits at any time, a five year freeze on teacher wages, wage cuts, staff position cuts, and additional teacher meetings without compensation. The proposal also introduces the right to oversee the hiring of new staff without existing staff input and an increase in class size maximums, among other measures.
Nate Starace, one of C.K. McClatchy’s union representatives, explained that “In a way it ‘de-professionalizes’ teaching. It takes away a lot of autonomy that teachers have. It shows new teachers looking for a place to teach that teachers are not seen as professionals that understand what they’re doing and that they need to be completely managed by the district office.”
The SCTA claims that the proposal would worsen staff shortages and create a deeper staffing crisis in the district. According to the association, the union has communicated this concern to the district in every bargaining session since 2019. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in spring of 2020, the staffing crisis grew even worse.
“Why would a new teacher come here when they can make more in another school district? The job’s hard enough. It’s not a way to attract new teachers,” added Starace.
Despite receiving federal funding over the duration of the pandemic and reports that the district has more funding now than at any time of its history, teachers and staff say little funding has been directed at addressing staffing shortages. The authorization to strike is a culmination of this conflict. But the district and SCTA are even at odds over where they’re at an impasse.
The Prospector reached out to C.K. McClatchy’s board of education member Lisa Murawski for comment but received no reply. Additionally, when asked to comment, district communications manager Alexander Goldberg responded with a link to Superintendent Jorge Aguilar’s March 9 press release.
In his statement, Aguilar asserted that SCUSD and SCTA were dealing with two separate negotiations: one over school reopening plans related to COVID and the other involving the successor contract negotiations. “The district and SCTA have both acknowledged that we are not at impasse over successor contract negotiations,” the statement reads.
Aguilar added that “it is unconscionable that SCTA is threatening a strike,” asserting that “it is offensive to all of our families that have been waiting for their children’s school experience to get back to normal.”
SCTA’s stance, however, is that the staffing shortage experienced during the COVID pandemic is not temporary. It believes that the contract proposal would further worsen the situation. The SCTA claims that it never separated these two negotiations issues.
In response to Aguilar’s message, SCTA stated “The district is now unsuccessfully trying to claim that the issues are limited only to its own, narrowly-focused proposals. The district appears to be arguing that only its proposals should be considered, while ignoring the fact that SCTA has made its own set of proposals to resolve the issues.”
On March 17, SCTA will hold a rally outside of the Serna Center at 4 p.m., where the next district board meeting will be held. The rally aims to show widespread community support for teachers and staff members.
After the board meeting, the bargaining teams of both unions will meet and discuss future steps.