Still waiting for a fair settlement: An update to the Ed Specialist caseload grievance
SDEA members who were over caseload during the 2023-24 school year and those currently over caseload are still waiting on a fair grievance settlement. The District’s most recent offer still underpays many members compared to past years.
The District is still proposing flat stipends for ranges of overages rather than a per-student, per-week amount. Their data is not reliable enough to report exact overages across the school year accurately, so ranges (caseloads of 21-23, 26-27, etc) would allow members to be paid more efficiently without extensive paperwork to correct even small errors in how many students were actually on their caseload. SDEA leaders have submitted a counterproposal that would maintain the District’s proposed structure of ranges, but which raises the stipends for each range to be more equivalent to what members were paid in past settlements. SDEA’s higher monetary proposal is still less than what the District would be spending if they were adequately staffing all the SPED vacancies and keeping educators from being overloaded.
Read the full counter below, along with past proposals:
- March 11, 2025: SDEA Counterproposal
- February 25, 2025: SDUSD Counterproposal
- January 15, 2025: SDEA Counterproposal
- December 9, 2024: SDUSD Proposal
Note: The settlement proposals contain references to Exhibit A and B (a list of eligible members) and a Caseload Grievance Appeal Form. Those do not yet exist and will be released after an agreement is reached. The process of generating the list of eligible members (and ensuring no one is left off that list!) can begin after the details of the settlement are finalized.
Special Education staffing is a crisis that needs more than delayed band-aid grievances.
Along with continuing to push for fair compensation for caseload overages, SDEA members are bargaining for more concrete solutions. The Bargaining Team has already proposed an increased stipend for Ed. Specialists, and at the next session on March 27 they will be proposing changes to Article 29: Special Education. As bargaining continues we will need to maintain pressure to fully staff our schools and ensure our students have the support they need.
SDEA members will need to make District leadership aware of the student impact of staffing shortages.
Students and educators are the ones impacted by the understaffing of Special Education, and in January SDEA members and classified colleagues showed up to make that clear! In April, we plan to meet with SDUSD Board Members so that they can share the urgency to solve this crisis with Ed Specialists who have been over contractual caseload limits month and month, year after year. Stay tuned for updates, show up at site actions in support of bargaining, and let’s keep the pressure on: Fully Staff Special Education NOW! We Can’t Wait!
