A victory at SCUSD!

Shout out to our community contributor Janae Raab for submitting notes on this important topic!

Important terms:

SEIU: Service Employees International Union Local 1021

SCTA: Sacramento City Teachers Association

At the Sacramento Unified School District Board meeting on 3/17/22 (link to meeting page here) parents showed up to demand that board members accept the reality that schools are short hundreds of teachers and staff.

They went on to point out the following issues:

• Their kids were not only missing out on the education they are entitled to, but also that they are legitimately unsafe at school

• The staff the District had been hiring were underpaid and therefore under-qualified because those were the only people willing to work part-time at minimum wage

• There is plenty of money in state and federal budgets to create a fiscally responsible contract (referring to labor contracts with SEIU 1021 and SCTA)

The Board responded with the following monetary claims:

• The president of the SCUSD Board claimed that the $125 million in the cash reserve cannot be used to fix the structural deficit because it's a "one-time fund"

• The district also had no record of $20,000 in funding that seems to have "disappeared"

What happened next?

School staff and teachers went on strike for about a week and a half until negotiations were finalized at the bargaining table!

You can find more details on the strike & outcomes at the CapRadio article linked here.

What was the outcome?

The community didn't back down and continued to speak and fight until a fiscally responsible and fair contract was established!