Welcome Back and #JoinOurFight

The last 2 weeks have been a blur as we welcome students to our classrooms, meet families and help onboard new colleagues. Last August, we were celebrating our 15% salary increase showing up in our paychecks for the first time, protecting our fully paid family health benefits and increasing counselor, secondary PE and elementary enrichment staffing to name just a few of the unprecedented improvements that we won in our contract through our collective actions as SDEA union educators.

On the heels of our successful efforts this last spring to move the district to rescind the layoff notices of over 200 of the newest educators in our schools, we will soon be embarking on a statewide coordinated contract campaign for our salary increase for this school year and beyond, filling the vacancies in special education, TK classrooms and elementary enrichment and ending the destabilizing cycle of layoffs and cutbacks.

California is the fifth largest economy in the world, yet we are failing to fully staff our schools, pay educators a living wage and secure the resources every student needs to thrive. If we can’t fix the inadequate state funding for public schools, we will continue to find ourselves battling the District over the impact of the latest budget crisis. That’s why starting this month, SDEA leaders are holding union meetings at every school and program where all members can weigh in on the priorities in our bargaining platform that we can all get behind, fight for and win together with union educators throughout the state. Reach out to your site/program representatives to help them schedule your Bargaining Input Session!

#JoinOurFight for the schools we all deserve, led by SDEA members like Khamphet Pease, an award-winning STEM teacher who has taught at Wilson Middle School for the past 19 years: