Letters in Solidarity: To Respect Our Students, You Must Respect Our Contract

To Respect Our Students, You Must Respect Our Contract

We hope that everyone was able to relax and recharge with family and friends over the break as we now enter the final sprint of our historic statewide We Can’t Wait coordinated contract campaign. We have wind in our sails as right before the break, our We Can’t Wait sibling local United Teachers of Richmond in the East Bay won fully paid family healthcare through the first strike in the history of their union.

We also made history here in San Diego with our union’s first strike authorization vote in 30 years regarding the district’s years-long violations of Special Education staffing requirements in our contract. The support expressed for a strike through our democratic process was resounding – 90.09% of participating members voted YES, with 178 schools and programs participating and 88% of dues-paying members casting ballots. 

We as the elected educator leaders on the SDEA board set a strike date: February 26. As soon as the date was announced, the district sent out information to families and staff that schools will be shut down on the day of the strike to “ensure that students are not placed in situations where adequate supervision, instructional continuity, and campus safety cannot be reliably maintained.” 

Our overwhelming 90% support for the strike exerted overwhelming pressure on the district to shut down schools on February 26. As over 6000 SDEA union educators, we shut down the second largest school district in the state of California. They know that schools can’t run without teachers, and that’s why educator strikes are powerful even for one day. We demonstrated that When WE Have the Numbers, WE Have the Power! We can continue to use our strength in numbers by showing up to the Time’s Up rally at the school board on Jan. 27 at 4 pm and getting your school ready to hit the strike line on Feb. 26!

On the day of the strike, we will have an opportunity to put the eyes of the whole city on our fight to stop the special education staffing crisis in our district. The chronic understaffing of Special Education denies our students with disabilities the individualized support they are entitled to receive, overloading educators and impacting entire school communities.

Even when funding is tight, district leaders must follow the union contract, comply with the law, and prioritize staffing that directly supports students. The district has significant unallocated reserves that can be spent on the current needs in our schools. This month, we will get flyers out to families calling on them to stand with us on our strike picket lines on February 26 and demand that San Diego Unified does the right thing. To Respect Our Students, You Must Respect Our Contract! We Can’t Wait!