San Diego teachers call off strike over special education

from Deborah BrennanCalMatters

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San Diego teachers called off a countywide strike after reaching an agreement with the district to invest in special education staff and services.

The teachers’ union had planned to strike on February 26 to protest overcrowded special education classesinadequate services for students and lack of support for teachers.

“These issues that teachers organized to raise the importance of support for students with special needs news were really critical, especially considering that the percentage of students in our district with (individualized education programs) increased from 13 percent to 18 percent,” said San Diego Unified School District Board President Richard Barrera.

It would be the first time in 30 years that San Diego teachers have gone on strike, but the district announced Friday that it had agreed to meet the teachers’ demands.

“We are very proud to have been able to reach this agreement with the district by mobilizing with families and community allies in schools across the district to fight for our demands for special education for our neediest students with disabilities,” said San Diego Education Association President Kyle Weinberg. “We believe this contract lays the groundwork for much-needed improvements in recruiting and retaining faculty to serve in these positions.”

The new contract includes planning time for special education teachers, stipends for oversize classes and educational funds for teachers earning special education credentials. It also includes additional student support services and LGBTQ protections. But the agreed wage increase will not take effect until the state funding issue is resolved.

Last week, San Diego Unified representatives lobbied lawmakers to increase funding for special education and restoring $5.6 billion in school funding which Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to keep to balance the state budget. California’s state funding formula is based on a revenue forecast for next year, and Newsom wants to accept a lower revenue figure, then make up the difference later if more money comes in.

Some other parts of the governor’s proposed budget would add money for schools, but the $5.6 billion deferred payment would cut San Diego about $85 million, Barrera said. The district has pledged to raise wages by 2.5 percent for the next two years after state education funding is restored and to implement retroactive raises.

San Diego Unified is the second largest school district in California, with about 95,000 students, second only to Los Angeles Unified. The last teacher strike in San Diego was in 1996, when teachers walked out of class for a week over pay and school decision-making.

The San Diego union reached an agreement just as San Francisco teachers ended a four-day strike last week. The action in San Francisco included pickets, rallies and negotiations and culminated in a $183 million deal that secured raises and fully funded health care.

A one-day strike planned for San Diego next week has accelerated negotiations over special education requirements, Barrera said.

“The organizing work that we’ve seen from our teachers over the past few months has been important in stepping up the issue and making it clear that teachers are prepared to walk out if we don’t get this agreement,” he said.

The San Diego agreement will add intervention counselors to support the social and emotional needs of all students. It will introduce stronger support for students with individualized education programs, legally binding documents that describe services for special education students. And it adds five days of time outside the classroom for education professionals to focus on case management, completing assessments and working with families.

San Diego Unified also aims to retain educators and fill vacancies by offering better pay and reimbursement for teachers who earn special education credentials. And agreed to keep full health benefits for employees, spouses and dependents.

Weiberg said the compact also calls for establishing a legal center for immigrant students on one campus, affirming that students and staff have the right to be called by their preferred names and pronouns, and creating gender-neutral bathrooms in schools.

Despite the tentative agreement with the district, Weinberg said the union will continue to push for more investment in education.

“We need to advocate to district leaders that the state funds schools fairly in the richest state in the country,” he said.

The new labor agreement means all schools will be open on Thursday, February 26 and the district will no longer have a scheduled back-up date of March 9. The school board will vote to ratify the agreement next week, and teachers union members will vote between next week and March 23.

“These negotiations, while tense at times, have produced an outcome that will stabilize our teacher workforce and ensure that all students are supported in the classroom,” San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Fabi Bagula, Ph.D., said in a statement.

Teachers rallied last month before the strike to demand funding for special education. San Diego Unified sets the special education caseload at 20 students per teacher, below the state standard of 28 to one. Weinberg said at the rally. Those ratios are a source of pride for teachers, but the district has not met its own standards, so many teachers have more students with special needs than they can safely manage.

Teachers said they often have class sizes that exceed standards and include students of widely varying cognitive levels, making it difficult to create lesson plans and instructional methods that work for all students. Some classes include students with behavioral problems and there aren’t enough aids to handle the workload, they said.

The new agreement gives teachers extra pay for additional students over 20 to a caseload, with the stipend increasing as more students exceed the limits, Barrera said.

“One of the things the super-level stipend does is create a financial incentive for the district to hire more special education teachers,” he said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.