Strike update: Sacramento school district rejects state superintendent’s invitation
READ MORE
Sacramento City Unified Schools labor strike explained
Sacramento City Unified School District teachers are poised to walk out and strike, affecting thousands of students. The Teachers Association’s last strike was 2019.
Expand All
There’s no end in sight to the Sacramento City Unified teacher strike. The district and teachers union as of midday Friday had not yet resumed bargaining, and the two sides had not set a date to return to the table.
Sacramento City Teachers Association President David Fisher announced that State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called a meeting later in the afternoon with SCTA, SEIU 1021 and Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jorge Aguilar.
Aguilar rejected Thurmond’s offer. He asked the teachers union instead to put forward a new counter-proposal.
“Because this is a local issue, we do not want to circumvent the appropriate process for reaching agreement with our local labor partners,” Aguilar said. “That process calls for the district to meet with SCTA to resolve these issues and bring an end to the strike.”
The district has agreed to meet next Thursday with SEIU 1021, the union representing classified staff.
But the impasse continues between the district and Sacramento City Teachers Association, which on Wednesday began an open-ended strike that closed instruction across the K-12 district of about 40,000 students and roughly 80 campuses.
Teachers and staff are striking over health and safety protocols amid the COVID-19 pandemic and staffing shortages that have left hundreds of students without a full-time teacher. The teachers union has been working under an expired contract since July 1, 2019.
The financially beleaguered district has offered several proposals this week including a 2% raise, several bonuses, and increased pay for substitutes and nurses.
The teachers say those incentives are insufficient to address what they say is a staffing crisis.
Fisher announced the meeting with Thurmond as teachers and staff rallied at City Hall and Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown.
Sacramento City Unified in a FAQ on its website says the district “remains ready and willing to continue negotiations” and claims the teachers union “has not responded to the district’s repeated offers to continue good faith negotiations.”
The district and teachers union have given conflicting reports of Tuesday’s mediation session, which ended without a deal.
Since then, both sides have said they are waiting for the other to return to the bargaining table.
It’s unclear how long the Sacramento City Unified standoff could last. In Minnesota, teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools system were on strike for 18 days before the district and its teachers union reached a tentative agreement on Friday.
“I just made a comment to my daughter this morning about if they think (the district) is gonna outlast us,” Fisher said Friday, standing on stage at Cesar Chavez Plaza. “She said, ‘You’re teachers. You’ve got all the patience in the world.’”
This story was originally published March 25, 2022 at 1:40 PM.
