How do unions shake down Sac City schools for COVID money? Go on strike and hurt the kids
Kids in the Natomas Unified School District are returning to classes five days a week.
Kids in the Elk Grove Unified and San Juan Unified school districts are returning to classes four days a week.
Kids in the Sacramento City Unified School District are returning to classes two days a week, for a couple of hours, and two of the unions serving the district are threatening to strike.
Yes, you read that right. We’re still in a global pandemic. Strike calls hurt district enrollment, which are the life’s blood of district revenues.
Strike calls cause parents of means to say “forget it” and pull their kids out of SCUSD for private schools or parochial schools. The chaos is bad for everyone and yet two unions serving SCUSD – SEIU 1021 and the Sacramento City Teachers Association – are calling for a strike anyway.
The unions representing many categories of support staff and teachers are doing this even though more than 40,000 kids at Sac City Unified have suffered too much in the last year already. This is especially poignant considering that more than 70% of these kids are Black, brown, Asian and Native American. More than 70% of Sac City kids qualify for free or reduced lunches.
A strike under these circumstances is unconscionable.
What are you doing if you participate in a strike on April 22 and 23, the same days that district high school kids return to class for the first time since March 13, 2020?
You’re participating in an exercise that hurts kids.
You are hurting the kids who are anxiously waiting to return. You are hurting the ones who already have.
This strike call was made by SEIU 1021, which represents teachers aides, bus drivers and food service workers, among others. It is being supported by the SCTA, the local teachers union.
The strike call is in defiance of a ruling by the state the Public Employment Relations Board. PERB had already agreed with the Sacramento City Unified School district that it reached an impasse with SEIU 1021.
By agreeing with SCUSD and certifying an impasse, the next step in this process for the district and its labor partners is supposed to be mediation. That’s state law, but no matter. The onus is now seemingly on a school district trying to get kids into school safely during a pandemic to use time and resources to ask a superior court judge for an injunction to stop the strike.
School kids take a back seat to adults
What a joke this is. People talk about equity for kids of color and about creating systems that are anti-racist, but somehow these goals don’t apply to SCUSD kids.
All anyone is talking about in this district are the needs and demands of adults. The district is sitting on $270 million in one-time funds from the federal government and the state for COVID-19 relief. The unions seemingly are trying to make sure enough of that money is earmarked to their liking.
Strip away all the noise and posturing and that’s what’s going on here.
“I’m incredibly disappointed and fearful most keenly about the district that finds itself in a fiscal calamity and now having $270 million to spend,” said Renee Webster-Hawkins, an SCUSD parent. “My fear is that the district will squander it away without any benefit to the children who need it the most.”
The fears of Webster-Hawkins are well founded.
The district offered SEIU 1021 members stipends of up to $2,850 to return to work.
SEIU has countered that it wanted a $1,250 stipend for its members, regardless of whether they returned to work. It wanted a prorated $1,000 stipend for employees who worked at schools when they were closed to instruction.
Employees with children 14 and under would receive either a weekly $125 stipend or the option of continuing to work remotely. Employees working remotely would receive a $360 stipend for expenses. They would receive a $750 stipend for professional development.
The union has 1,900 members but how many would qualify for all these stipends is unclear.
SEIU had wanted the district to open four “children’s centers” staffed by “child development teachers” and “child care attendants” who had been laid off by the district. When they asked for this, the district declared an impasse. Then they came back with the proposed $4,610 in stipends.
Does any other public school district in Sacramento County open child care centers for its employees?
“Not to my knowledge,” said Dave Gordon, superintendent of the Sacramento County Board of Education. I then asked Gordon how the other public school districts in Sacramento County are doing.
“Other school districts are making good progress,” Gordon said. “I’ve said over and over. You have to have collaboration to work efficiently on behalf of your students and families. The other districts in the county have collaborated to come up with approaches that are effective in opening schools.”
Unreasonable union demands
The other piece is that the unions are refusing to talk with district negotiators about new CDC guidelines that say 6 feet is no longer the required standard for safe social distancing. Most students can be safe at 3 feet, the CDC says.
Again, no matter. The unions don’t want to talk about that. But the district backed off on the 3 feet CDC guidelines in its proposal to SEIU 1021.
Want more absurdity? If Sac City Unified’s wayward labor partners agreed to return to school four days a week like Elk Grove Unified, or five days a week like Natomas Unified, a lot of the district employees would then have places to put their kids and wouldn’t have to ask for a child care benefit that other districts don’t provide.
But the most SCUSD was able to get were two school days a week at a couple of hours a day.
Why is SCUSD so unlucky? The answer is John Borsos. He is the operative who works for the California Teachers Association and the Sacramento City Teachers Association, the local teachers union.
Borsos doesn’t talk to the media but his specialty is maximum chaos to cause confusion and fear that ultimately results in people giving into him no matter what.
In 2017, Borsos led SCTA to call for a strike. In that case, PERB made recommendations to mediate salary negotiations between the district and SCTA. But the teachers union maligned the recommendations, ignored them and called for a strike.
No one from the state said a peep about that, nor did the community. The district caved and Sac City teachers won a contract that made them the highest paid teachers in the region.
Then in 2020, Borsos was the point man for a political campaign to unseat Jessie Ryan, who was the president of the SCUSD board. She was also leading a board trying to fix the district’s structural deficit. Borsos was listed in a campaign questionnaire as advisor for Ryan challenger Lavinia Phillips.
SEIU 1021, SCTA and CTA combined to contribute more than $200,000 to Phillips’ campaign and Ryan was defeated.
That sent a message to all elected officials in Sacramento. You cross Borsos and you have a problem. You can bet the house that there will be more chaos from Borsos in the coming days. Bank on it. That’s why you hear crickets from all Sacramento elected officials and community leaders over strike calls that defy state law and hurt all kids but especially Black and brown kids.
School board’s tepid response
And it’s why a current SCUSD board put out a namby-pamby statement Thursday about Borsos’ latest aggression.
“We understand that child care has been a challenge for many of our employees,” said board president, Christina Pritchett. “However, our students need our schools open. We know our schools serve as safe havens – providing access to not only academics, but also food, support, and social and emotional care. This is especially true for our district, which serves vulnerable students, with 70% of Sacramento City Unified students low income, foster youth, homeless and English language learners. We look forward to a productive conversation under the guidance of a state-appointed mediator. We invite SEIU to welcome our students back to in-person education with us.”
Why don’t all the board members sign their names to this statement? Why don’t they speak plainly to parents about what is going on here. District labor partners are denying science and trying to shake down the district for COVID-19 money during a pandemic while blocking kids from returning to school, where they need to be.
You think by using passive language you are going to get that message across to parents and community members trying to understand why their district can’t function the way other neighboring districts do? Why is nobody talking about using COVID-19 money to pay for SATs for all SCUSD kids? Or use the money to send our kids on college trips? Or for youth sports?
Instead adults are exerting their power to act in a way that hurts kids while Sacramento turns away in its liberal hypocrisy.
This story was changed April 16 to clarify the proposed union stipends; April 20 to correct the spelling of John Borsos.
This story was originally published April 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
