Sacramento schools remain closed as teachers strike continues with no movement on bargaining
Sacramento City Unified School District campuses remained closed for a second day as a teacher and classified employee strike carried on without a deal to end the impasse.
Representatives for the district and the Sacramento City Teachers Association each said they were open to bargaining, but they did not resume negotiating by Thursday afternoon.
For the second day in a row, teachers stood at picket lines outside of schools all over the city. Hundreds then traveled to the Sacramento County Office of Education in Rancho Cordova for a demonstration where they reiterated their concerns about staffing levels. They also called on SCOE to bring the district and the labor partners to the bargaining table.
Yvette Martinez, a child development teacher at Mark Twain Elementary, said she’s worried her program will be cut and that she will lose her job due to funding. Positions in the program have gone unfilled.
She has had a substitute in her class filling a teacher aide position the entire school year. Parents of her students, as young as 3 years old, are supportive of the strike.
“They read the news,” Martinez. “They ask a lot of questions. I’m constantly communicating with them.”
The unions characterize the strike as open-ended, meaning there is no scheduled end date. Schools could close again on Friday.
The Sacramento City Teachers Association is at odds with the district over its proposals for temporary pay incentives and health guidelines meant to address working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. SEIU Local 1021, which represents classified employees, also is participating in the strike.
The teachers union also is negotiating a full new contract. Its members have been working under an expired one since July 1, 2019.
The financially troubled district in December proposed cuts to health care benefits, an unpaid furlough day and a 1% salary reduction. Since then, the district has offered employees a 2% wage increase and a number of one-time pay incentives.
Sacramento County Superintendent Dave Gordon urged the district and labor partners to return to the bargaining table and reopen schools, adding that all of the county’s school districts have experienced severe staffing shortages and still kept their schools open during the pandemic.
“In the wake of all they have been through these past two years, our children need to be in school. Closing schools is an extreme hardship for many families, and detrimental to the well-being of our children,” said Gordon.
On Facebook, parent Alina Cervantes responded to The Sacramento Bee’s request for comments saying the long-term impacts of open-ended strikes cannot be ignored.
“They have suffered enough through the last years of school shut downs,” she wrote. “Not all families can just take off work for days on end. Not all children have safe places to be besides school.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2022 at 10:24 AM.