Sacramento’s second teacher strike in four years begins with no end in sight

Sacramento’s second teacher strike in four years kicked off Wednesday with hundreds of educators taking to picket lines and urging the Sacramento City Unified School District to accept their union’s proposals for better pay and working conditions.

About 1,000 teachers and school staff — many of them clad in red shirts — gathered outside of the district’s headquarters for their main rally, where some of them sharply criticized Superintendent Jorge Aguilar’s handling of drawn-out labor negotiations.

SEIU Local 1021, which represents classified employees, went on strike in solidarity with teachers over health and safety protocols and staffing shortages which have left hundreds of students without a full-time teacher.

“Ironically we are walking out to make sure every student has a teacher in the classroom,” Sacramento City Teachers Association President David Fisher said at an early morning event at McClatchy High School.

Schools closed across the city with the district unable to staff its campuses. That kept more than 40,000 students home for the day.

The strike is expected to continue on Thursday as the unions and the district remain unable to reach an agreement on staffing and COVID-19-related spending. The teachers union also is negotiating with the district over a full contract; its members have been working under an expired labor agreement since July 1, 2019.

The district this week released some details from its latest offer to the union, which included a 2% wage increase and a number of one-time bonuses for staff. Superintendent Aguilar and school board trustees have been reluctant to offer more because of the district’s longstanding financial challenges. The district was at risk of a state takeover in 2019 because it was projected to go in the red.

“The district remains ready and willing to resume negotiations and the district’s negotiations team is standing by. The district’s offer to increase compensation for SCTA-represented employees ... remains on the table,” the district said in a news release.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who helped break a stalemate between teachers and the district in 2017, urged both sides to “do everything possible to end this strike immediately,” saying students have missed enough school and their education and mental health are at sake.

In a statement Wednesday morning, Steinberg said that the parties needed to “commit to some form of working together” to keep the strike from affecting students.

Parents sympathetic to strike

Many Sacramento parents say they’re sympathetic to the teachers, who’ve been working in difficult conditions throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

Rhythmic drum beats played loudly at the rally outside of the Serna Center. Sixth grade student Marco Perez and his friends have been practicing on Home Depot buckets with a talented drummer that Alice Birney Public Waldorf K-8 School parents and teachers raised money to hire. That’s because there are very few district-funded activities at Sacramento City Unified schools, said his mother, Marie Perez.

“I don’t have a reason to continue at Sacramento City except that I love my child’s teachers,” she said. “That’s the only thing that is keeping my son enrolled. The community is amazing.”

Teresa Kayatta, a Sacramento attorney, brought her two young children to the Serna Center to participate in the day-long strike. Kayatta knows that it could be days before her children return to their classrooms.

She said she’s fortunate to be working from home. Like many other students across the country, her first grade son spent much of the last school year in distance learning.

Her son attends speech therapy three times a week. Her husband, Taylor Kayatta, said requests for additional district resources sometimes get them nowhere. His frustration has led him to announce a run for school board.

Teresa Kayatta said if the parties don’t come to a resolution over negotiations, and schools remain closed, it will harm her son’s progress in the classroom, where he communicates daily with peers and teachers.

But even with those concerns, she supports the strike.

“This could mean many days away from the classroom,” she said. “But teachers deserve better treatment.”’

What Sacramento teachers say

Teachers on the picket lines said they’ve been overworked.

Ingrid Hutchins, who teaches in the district’s independent study program, said that program has 571 students on its waiting list “who have had no education this year” due to the severe staffing shortages.

With staffing shortages across the district, several classes are sent to cafeterias and gymnasiums to be monitored by one or two teachers or substitutes.

“So when we say that students are back in school (from the pandemic), there are students back in school — but there are many students who are not back in school.”

Kindergarten teacher Karina Ayala, 31, stood outside Father Keith B. Kenny Elementary School in Oak Park Wednesday morning holding a sign that read, “Education is a right. Better schools are worth the fight.”

Her main concern is staffing. The school has not had a physical education teacher all year, she said, and substitute teachers rarely pick up the phone when called to come in to the school. Teachers have to teach PE in their prep time.

“We don’t have the certification to teach PE, and we lose our prep time,” Ayala said.

Ayala, who has been a teacher at the school for five years, makes $59,571, as of 2020. That salary is not enough to afford to buy a home in Sacramento on her own in the competitive market, she said, so she lives with her parents.

What people have to say about the strike

Several organizations and labor unions took to the stage in support of the strike.

Four Rohnert Park teachers drove to Sacramento to join the rally, nearly two weeks after their six-day strike over wages ended.

“You are on the right side of this fight,” said high school teacher Lisa Bauman, who helped negotiate with her district on behalf of the Rohnert Park Cotati Educators Association. “You are fighting for your students and your community, and they are in it for the long haul with you. That’s the only way things are going to change.”

But not all parents supported the strike.

Caroline Nasella said she doesn’t have a clear understanding of what the Sacramento City Teachers Association wants. Nasella spoke to The Bee from her home and was not at the rally.

“It is also overwhelming as a parent because it seems that there is so much vitriol between the union and the district that ‘good faith’ negotiations seem impossible,” Nasella said.

On Wednesday, her daughter was home watching television instead of being in class at Phoebe Hearst Elementary.

“We are lucky because we can work from home, but it is still disruptive and I sympathize with parents who have to work outside of the home.”

David O’Toole, a parent of four students in the district, said he doesn’t feel his family is represented in “this ugly and unnecessary battle.” He said both the district and union share responsibility for crumbling negotiations.

He was troubled by a letter written by leaders of a union representing principals and other administrators that criticized Aguilar and the school board. The letter said many school administrators had “lost confidence” in the district’s leadership.

“The strike and the recent dissemination of confidential materials by SCTA and the district make clear the eradication of trust and the necessity for leadership change and third party direction if the district is to be governable and financially sustainable again,” he said.