Keeping superintendent gives Sacramento City schools stability. Our students deserve that
It’s not uncommon for unions to vote that they have “no confidence” in their leaders. That just happened, for example, within the Sacramento County Public Defender’s office.
But there is no constituency rushing to publicly defend Public Defender Steven M. Garrett — at least not yet. There is a growing constituency coming to the defense of Jorge Aguilar, the superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District.
Aguilar got a “no confidence” vote from the Sacramento City Teachers Association and clerical staff with SEUI 1021 recently. But on Thursday, the SCUSD school board voted unanimously to give Aguilar a positive job evaluation and to extend his contract until June of 2025.
The union of school principals also publicly backed Aguilar on Thursday. “We have watched and listened as our fellow SCUSD colleagues have voiced their displeasure with Superintendent Aguilar, “ said the United Professional Educators and Teamsters 150 in a statement directed at the SCUSD board.
“We do not believe that replacing Superintendent Aguilar at this critical time will do anything other than further harm our children. We implore you to stay the course with Superintendent Aguilar and afford our children and district the opportunity to explore the continuity this decision will bring.”
The keyword in that last statement is “continuity.” SCUSD has had a revolving door of superintendents for 20 years and in audit after audit, county and state education officials have cited instability in leadership as a factor in poor student outcomes.
Why is that important?
Well, SCUSD serves roughly 40,000 kids who are mostly Black, Latino, Asian and Native American. The district also has homeless kids and foster kids. Roughly 70% of SCUSD students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
You want to talk about equity and confronting system racism? What is more fundamental to those principles than improving the educational outcomes of kids like the students at SCUSD?
And on the subject of student outcomes, The Bee’s Editorial Board has previously reported these disturbing numbers: “Before the pandemic, we knew white students and students of color at SCUSD had unequal school careers. More than 60% of white students met or exceeded the standard in English, while less than 50% for Asian students did, less than 40% for Latinos did and less than 30% of Blacks did. There are also gaps in math.”
“Roughly 73% of pupils in SCUSD are children of color. This means tens of thousands of kids who started this year in distance learning — some have called it crisis learning — are already behind.”
SCUSD are rightly proud of elite educational programs such as the Humanities and International Studies program at CK McClatchy High School. But the underside to that positive story is that many Black and brown kids are not prepared academically to qualify for the program by the time they reach ninth grade.
Let’s also not forget that Black kids at SCUSD, like Black kids county-wide, are suspended from school at alarming rates.
Instability in SCUSD leadership has allowed these unacceptable student outcomes to continue for too long. Shame on us in Sacramento for caring more about “labor peace” in our public school district than we do about student outcomes.
If Sacramento is such a “liberal” and “progressive” city, why aren’t we up in arms about Black kids being suspended at higher rates than other students? Because Sacramento’s liberal politics are based on transactional alliances.
In a union town, every discussion about SCUSD is framed through a labor lens. Suspensions happen in the classroom. So eventually, any actions related to improving suspensions involve questioning the responses of teachers to Black kids at the classroom level. Those types of discussions involve bargaining and that’s when people who would be outraged get lock-jaw instead.
Or, they blame Aguilar or elected board members when those people are nowhere near the classrooms when the suspensions take place.
As long as achieving “labor peace” is more important than student outcomes, then “no confidence” votes are going to happen because throwing down the gauntlet has been a very effective tactic in this district.
In 2017, right after Aguilar arrived in town, SCTA disregarded the findings of fact by a state auditor who called for mediation and instead moved right to a strike vote. To his ever-lasting regret, Aguilar agreed to a deal brokered by Mayor Darrell Steinberg that made SCUSD teachers the highest paid in the region. They also have the most lucrative health care plan of any teacher group in the region.
What was the result of these actions?
In a “dysfunctional” district, the fortunes of SCTA members have improved in recent years. But the outcomes of students have not.
That is why the unanimous support of Aguilar by the school board is significant. The publicly elected board cast a vote for stability because they know, as the principals union stated, that more instability in the district will only keep the district from addressing student outcomes. Moreover, the district does have labor peace with three of its five unions not named SCTA or SEIU 1021.
As a parent of two children at SCUSD, I support Aguilar because I have skin in this game. I am a product of California public schools and I want my school district to be healthy and strong.
I once sent my kids to private school and I regretted it. I have no interest in charter schools or other GOP-backed educational ideas. I want SCUSD to do right by its kids. I want Sacramento to put student outcomes first because if we don’t — if we make it all about the adults — then we are liars when we say we care about equity and attacking systemic racism.
After more than a decade of writing about this issue, I’m done with the labor peace game. I’m done with the false choice of being “pro-district” or “pro-teacher.” I love my teachers and no, love is not an exaggeration.
My teachers have helped my kids be better people. My teachers and my principal have had my back and I will be forever in their debt.
But we need Aguilar in place because he is focused on student outcomes first. Other districts, like Elk Grove Unified, seem to be able to focus on student outcomes while addressing labor needs in a collaborative way.
That’s what we want in SCUSD, especially because of the kids we serve in our district. We need to be focused on them more than anything else. The school board and superintendent have the fiduciary responsibility to improve outcomes.
We need to hold them — and the teachers union — accountable if student outcomes don’t improve.
