Without deal to end strike, Sacramento school district and union leaders must step aside

With each day the strike continues, it becomes increasingly clear that the Sacramento City Unified School District and union negotiators responsible for getting a deal done are unfit for the task at hand. If a deal is not imminent, every negotiator at the bargaining table needs to step aside and allow fresh voices and officials intent on ending the strike to take over.

Years of deep-seated vitriol has created a negotiating atmosphere so toxic that this strike seems less about COVID protocols or the unconscionable staffing issues at hand, and more about which side wins and which side loses. All parties are engaging in bad-faith tactics, publicizing proposals, delaying or simply not attending bargaining sessions and spreading misinformation that distorts public understanding. On some subjects, like district finances, neither side can agree on the same set of facts.

With the strike nearing a week of closed schools and canceled instruction for roughly 80 campuses, some of the responsibility falls on district Superintendent Jorge Aguilar, who has even lost the support of Sacramento’s school administrators. A majority of principals, vice principals and various administrators last week said they lost confidence in what they described as “unsustainable” senior leadership in the district office.

On Friday, Aguilar also rejected an offer from State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to have every party meet with state and county education officials and local politicians to potentially chart a path to ending the strike.

“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 (the unions) to resolve these issues and bring an end to the strike.”

Yet when Aguilar rejected the invitation, it had been multiple days since the district had actually met with the Sacramento City Teachers Association and SEIU Local 1021, which represents support staff.

SCTA and SEIU 1021 also deserve blame for souring relationships within the district. This is the fourth time a strike has been called in five years, and the longest in at least three decades. Teachers and school employees deserve raises, reliable health care and safe working conditions. But far too often SCTA leaders slow-walk negotiations and exploit conflict to pursue positions that are untenable financially or beyond what the law requires. That has routinely allowed bargaining efforts to devolve into impasses, mediation and walkouts.

Good unions know how to fight for member interests without harming the public, but many in California have lost sight of that balance. Teachers unions have become the worst examples, and it’s students and families that are hurt most.

Talks with SCTA and SEIU 1021 apparently resumed over the weekend after several days of silence and impotent emails from lawyers. That’s an encouraging sign but it will take good-faith negotiating to get a deal struck, and it’s hard not to be skeptical given the mutual animus at the bargaining table.

More than 40,000 Sacramento City Unified students need to be in school — right now. For a student population that largely qualifies for subsidized meals and many speak a language other than English at home, a prolonged strike enhances complex inequities that worsened during distance learning.

The power of unions, especially in an election year, has prompted most political players in Sacramento to stand idly by as students languish and families face untold impacts from school closures. Mayor Darrell Steinberg aided negotiations three times over his lengthy political career and again has called for labor peace. County Supervisor Phil Serna and City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela attended bargaining sessions over the weekend, yet the vast majority of elected officials in Sacramento have remained woefully silent. California’s capital is no stranger to fence-sitting, but there is no political trade-off that justifies allowing the community’s most vulnerable to remain stuck in educational limbo.

Labor tension exists in the other 12 Sacramento County public school districts, yet Sacramento City Unified stands alone in its dysfunction. Surely there is a path to compromise and ending this needless labor strike so children can get back in school where they belong. If district and union leaders are unwilling to see that path and get a deal done, they need to step aside.