Sacramento City Unified seems suddenly stable. But does it suffer from a crisis of confidence?

These would appear to be stable times for the Sacramento City Unified School District.

After years of threats that the district was on the brink of insolvency and a state takeover, its budget has a $23.2 million surplus. Sacramento City teachers, already the highest-paid in the region, bargained this summer for a 10% raise retroactive to last school year, a key agreement that union and district leaders argue will help attract and retain educators in a district with dozens of vacant positions. And a once toxic relationship between district administrators and the powerful teachers’ union has suddenly become cordial, with the sides exchanging unprecedented niceties when they announced the salary bump in August.

However, a lingering lack of confidence remains among some parents, rooted in years of discord within the district serving 43,000 students. That conflict was manifested most clearly in a pair of teacher strikes and a years-long public relations war between the district office and the unions. While district officials and union leaders are cautiously celebrating a new era of cooperation and stability, it’s worth noting that the new era is just a few months old.

“There’s a calm and a relief,” said Chinua Rhodes, the district’s Board of Education president. “And it’s mixed with trepidation.”

The relationship between the state’s 12th-largest district and its politically-active teachers union hit a turning point the last week of June, when former Superintendent Jorge Aguilar abruptly announced he was stepping down after six tumultuous years.

Aguilar arrived in Sacramento championing equity and college preparedness in a diverse district where resources are lacking at many schools in low-income neighborhoods. He was welcomed by the teachers union, which said at the time that his hiring was “a great opportunity to move the partnership (between the sides) forward.”

Less than three months later, the teachers union was threatening to strike. The work stoppage was only avoided after an 11th-hour deal was struck granting raises for teachers.

From then on, it seemed Aguilar was the primary target of the Sacramento City Teachers Association’s ire; a majority of union members cast a vote of no confidence in Aguilar in 2021 and union leaders called for his removal.

Aguilar did not return messages seeking comment for this story.

“With him leaving, it was like everyone took a breath and released it,” said Nikki Milevsky, a veteran union leader and the SCTA’s current president.

In stepped Lisa Allen as the interim superintendent. Allen has worked for the district for 28 years and “has held positions at every level – climbing through the ranks as a resource teacher supporting Title I students – all the way to Deputy Superintendent, overseeing every major department within the school district,” her district biography says.

Allen, district officials and the teachers union began meeting almost immediately after she took over and reached an accord on the 10% raise just two months later. The process was almost shockingly smooth: no mediators, no arbitration and no public threats of a strike.

Union officials said they are hopeful the amicable tone of the negotiations continues.

“We’re getting along and there’s a problem-solving approach,” said SCTA vice president David Fisher. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to agree on everything.”

Mo Kashmiri, the parent of a Sacramento City Unified middle schooler and a former candidate for the county board of education, said he and other parents “have hope for the first time in as long as I can remember.” Still, he acknowledged, “there’s been so much tumult that I’d be insane to say there’s no trepidation.”

“I feel like it is just going to take time and there’s no way around it,” he said. “Trust is built slowly and lost quickly. But I really feel like we’ve turned the corner.”

Daniel Conway is a parent of four district students and was a member of a group called Save Our Students Coalition that mobilized when the district was under threat of a state takeover in 2019. He said many of the issues the district has faced go back decades, and “there’s this sense that you’ve been on a roller coaster so long and you’ve got whiplash and you’re just ready to get off.”

“Things seem OK right now, but there’s no reason to take that for granted,” he said. “On the one hand, I’m enjoying this relative period of calm. But I’m not convinced this storm has passed. This feels like the eye of the hurricane.”

Sac City finances improve

District officials and union leaders are painting a suddenly rosy picture of the district’s finances.

The district’s rainy day fund is projected to remain above $13.7 million through the 2025-26 school year, according to district budget officials. It received $46.6 million in additional state funds last year and is projected to see a bump of $18.5 million this school year, district officials said. Five years after facing the real threat of a state takeover – in which a school district essentially yields all decision making to an appointed administrator – the district is handing out generous raises.

However, potential warning signs might be looming.

The district’s state funding is projected to increase by just $705,000 next year, budget officials said. The district has not yet paid a $47 million fine to the state it incurred for failing to make up for the instructional time lost during a 2022 teacher strike, although it has accounted for the penalty in its budget projections, district officials said. To help pay for salary increases, the board voted to place less money into its budget reserves than it had in recent years.

And in addition to the 10% raises approved for teachers over the summer, the district earlier this month granted 10% raises retroactive to July 2022 and other pay bumps for custodians, bus drivers, food service workers and other employees.

More raises are likely on the way. When they announced their summer salary accord, the district and the teachers’ union said they had set a goal of reaching a new two-year contract for the current school year and the next one by Nov. 15. That date has come and gone, but any raises approved through another agreement could impact the district’s bottom line.

In its analysis of the summer raises’ impact on Sac City’s finances, the Sacramento County Office of Education said it appears the district will maintain a required minimum budget reserve through 2026. But SCOE also issued a word of caution, saying the reserve could fall below a state-mandated minimum if future salary increases are approved.

If the district can’t maintain a minimum budget reserve, the county education office will “immediately make a determination that the district is at risk of insolvency and, among other things, direct the district to submit a proposal for addressing the fiscal conditions that resulted in the determination,” SCOE Superintendent Dave Gordon wrote in the September letter.

For their part, district officials contend they can afford the recent raises and have been upfront with the unions about what they can afford moving forward. And they’re celebrating being free of the threat of a takeover.

“That in itself, there should be a parade,” said Rhodes, the board president. “It’s so different than the time of saying the state is going to take over your district.”

Rhodes also argues that paying educators and other school staff more is vital to improving the district’s performance, particularly at schools that traditionally have been under-resourced.

“How do we become more competitive in the region? One of the ways we can have that impact is by putting our values into the budget,” he said.

Still, Rhodes acknowledges that the district may be suffering from a crisis of confidence among some parents and has a long road ahead to win back trust.

“Four months doesn’t change eight years or 10 years,” he said. “But I hope what it does is show that change is possible. We have come a long way and we have a long way to go. Both of those things can be true at the same time.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2023 at 5:00 AM.