Letters in Solidarity: Winning All the Things on Election Day and in Our Bargaining Platform

It’s hard to believe that we’re already two months into the school year and we’re well on our way to building strong connections with students, families and our colleagues. Those connections create bridges to engage with our school communities on our union’s critical priorities as the ballots for the election have now arrived in the mail.

In SDUSD District A (Scripps Ranch, Mira Mesa, Madison, Clairemont, and some of Kearny cluster), SDEA endorsed school board member Sabrina Bazzo is up for reelection. We will be passing out flyers to families at schools throughout District A and organizing a walk on November 3 to get the word out about Sabrina, a PTA president who has been instrumental to keeping schools safe during the pandemic and stable by rescinding the layoff notices of over 200 of the newest teachers in our schools. Reelecting Sabrina is our union’s top priority in this election because without a pro-educator and pro-public education school board, it becomes much harder for us to continue organizing to win transformational changes for our students and our schools.

At the beginning of last school year, we were celebrating our 15% raise 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. We will soon be embarking on a statewide coordinated contract campaign for our salary increase for this school year and beyond, to fill the ongoing vacancies in our schools and end the demoralizing cycles of layoffs and cutbacks.

California is the wealthiest state in the country, yet we are failing to fully staff schools, pay educators wages that allow us to live in the communities we serve 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 last month, SDEA leaders held union meetings at schools and programs throughout the district where members weighed in on potential improvements to our contract. The SDEA Bargaining Commission, made up of 20 educator leaders from diverse job roles and grade spans, will now review your input and surface widely and deeply felt priorities to include in our bargaining platform. We hope to join union meetings at your school or program after we #WinAllTheThings on Election Day and start refocusing our efforts on ratifying a bargaining platform that we can all commit to fight for with union educators throughout the state.