Edhat Staff
Dos Pueblos High School students organized a walkout on Friday to demonstrate their solidarity with Santa Barbara Unified School District teachers who are engaged in a pay dispute with the administration.
The students left during their first period and led a peaceful protest march to Girsh Park, approximately two miles away from campus.
Student leaders stated they are in support of fair pay and living conditions for SB Unified staff and faculty.
Teachers have stopped providing club meetings and one-on-one tutoring during lunch hours as well as special events that require teacher supervision while the Santa Barbara Teachers Association (SBTA) conducts contract negotiations.
Dos Pueblos High School students walked out of class today in support of Santa Barbara Teachers. Seen while substitute teaching. pic.twitter.com/Z8HC3uqu4c
— Ian Nicholson 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@itsiannicholson) December 1, 2023
On social media students have expressed their frustration with the district and support of teachers, emphasizing the importance of tutoring and clubs.
The pay dispute arose due to underpayment of teachers by $6.7 million last year, with the district attributing the issue to COVID-19 funding. SBTA is demanding better pay and benefits, citing the high cost of living in the area. The district announced it has offered a compensation package equivalent to a 19% raise over two years, but the teachers’ union argues that it falls short.
Students who participated in the walkout will receive an unexcused absence, a consequence students are aware of.
In this display of support for their teachers, Dos Pueblos High School students aim to bring attention to the ongoing labor dispute and its impact on the education system, emphasizing the importance of fair pay and advocating for the well-being of both teachers and students alike.
Way to go, students! You should all be proud for exercising your 1st Amendment rights and supporting the teachers who do so much for you!
The PR letter sent out that they offered 19% was false info. District is calculating that our smaller class sizes are part of our “raise”, they also included health care cost that many employees don’t even use. They are putting $ on students and saying we get paid x amount per student caseload. That is not right. Every child, every chance, everyday, means you need smaller class sizes for success. And the district should stop paying a PR person to write and falsify info.
This is directly from the district’s press release:
“SBUSD PROPOSES $22 MILLION TOTAL COMPENSATION PACKAGE TO SBTA
EQUAL TO A 19% RAISE OVER TWO YEARS
8% SALARY INCREASE FOR 2024-25 AND 4% SALARY INCREASE FOR 2025-26
DISTRICT-PAID 75% OF MEDICAL PREMIUMS UNDER ANY PLAN
CLASS SIZE REDUCTION PLACED PERMANENTLY IN CONTRACT”
Reading through it, seems pretty clear they’re making an evaluation of 19%, not saying it’s a direct 19% salary increase.
But whatever the district proposes, it’s up to the union to counter.
FWIW – here’s the district’s PR statement on class size reduction
“Class Size Reduction Placed Permanently In Contract
For the last three years, the District and SBTA have agreed to year-to-year side letter
agreements calling for reduced class sizes. SBTA has proposed to include the side letter
language – and in some cases to further reduce those numbers – permanently in the
negotiated agreement.
The District agreed with SBTA to place class size reduction permanently in the contract and
proposed to continue the class size reduction numbers contained in the latest side letter
agreement. These reduced class sizes have been funded by one-time funds which are
expiring. This means the $6.2 million ongoing cost to maintain reduced class sizes would
have to be paid out of regular District funds and represents a new, ongoing $6.2 million
expenditure for the SBTA bargaining unit.”
=to a 19% raise is not true. And all permanent means is that is no longer a side letter. Next year they could ask to change the language and up the class sizes again. The reason why they are putting it this way to make it seem like they are close to what the teacher’s asked. This is not done by accident.
The public deserves to see where all the monies are going? The district leadership priorities seems skewed. Millions of dollars to consultants, and travel and new, unnecessary positions in admin for former colleagues of the Superintendent. To anyone trying to figure out where the money is going it is clearly not going to teachers. To this year is the only year in SBUSD history that leadership had to ask for a waiver from the state because it cheated teachers out of 6.7 million while also having a budget surplus.
I am glad to see student’s engaged in supporting teachers. At the end of the day it is the vulnerable students who needs will continue to go unmet. It has never been every child, every chance, everyday. Painfully low scores for foster youth, english language learners and students with differences has become the new normal.
A successful model is bottom up, with a proactive approaches and best practices to students who struggle, like offering intensive remediation for all those students who through no fault of theirs became ” curriculum casualties” from a flawed approach to reading that the leadership clung to until this year.
Maybe leadership will hear the students. They sure don’t hear parents or teachers sadly. The PR guy really underestimates the public intelligence by misleading them with statements that they are offering 19% raise over 2 years” but they don’t really provide reasoning or a rationale for how they got that number. They are offering an 8% raise, followed by a 4% raise the following year. Even compounded, that’s only 12.32% raise over the current salaries. Why can’t we be fair or even generous to our teachers? Maybe that would not allow for bloated salaries at the top and that’s what a top down model cares most about.
This is right on point. CA taxpayers pay more for schools but apparently a lot of what we pay in taxes doesn’t get to the teachers but instead pays for bloated executive level and management level positions. Obviously some executive level positions are needed but not the numbers with which we burdened.
Let’s be honest:
About 10% or less of the students actually GAF about the teachers.
The rest are happy to leave school and have it be “sanctioned.”
Anyone who says otherwise graduated decades ago 🤣
You are severely underestimating how politically active and engaged this student generation is. I suspect when they are old enough to vote, the tides will drastically change for the better.
This was not “sanctioned.” “You’d know that if you bothered to even read the article before ridiculing these kids.
“Students who participated in the walkout will receive an unexcused absence, a consequence students are aware of.”
You really should make an effort to educate yourself on topics before spewing out the usual nothingness.
Overly simplistic assessment not based on current facts.
SBPOSER – leave it to you to spew out ignorant and simple minded nothingness. Where you there? Did you see or hear the students gather and give speeches about how their education is being directly affected by this? No, of course not. You were just lurking and waiting to belittle those who are trying to make a difference in their lives. You didn’t need to say anything at all, yet you chose to be cruel and insult and mock these bright and motivated students for speaking up for their teachers and themselves. You should be ashamed.
The next generation gives me hope!
Thank you DP students. Thanks to Principal Woodward supporting free speech. Each student deserves recognition for being a person willing to take risks and demonstrate the kind of courage that leads to positive outcomes. In a town as affluent as ours , it should not be about how little we pay our teachers but about how generously we can pay them so they stay.
Love that these students take risks and stand by their teachers.
Chaos hurts our most vulnerable students the most. Vulnerable students need a stable environment offering stability and the appropriate resources to succeed & even make meaningful progress which California Ed code dictates. The entire system needs to focus on the teachers and students needs.. and do it urgently.
This is what reality is for far too many students. Adding an unstable environment makes matters worse.
In 2022-23, only 8 percent of the district’s Emergent Multilingual Learners in 3rd grade could read at grade level. That number was 6 percent for students with disabilities. Out of all Latino students in the 3rd grade, only 30 percent met or exceeded grade-level standards in reading. For white students, that number was 74 percent.
We can’t afford to drag this out. Students are counting on us.
Proud of the DP students for supporting the teachers. As a parent, I would like to support them too. Not sure how to do that best but I’m with them.
I saw a chart of how teachers’ pay compares across various districts, and all I could think about was, Wow! How underpaid all these teachers are, in every district, especially compared to how much the administrators and consultants are making!
The district is trying to make the public believe that an 8% raise is actually going to end up being 19%. Class sizes are not part of salaries. Not everyone takes medical benefits. Maybe some positions in the executive cabinet should be cut and no consultants should be hired. That would save about 16 million. The travel budget went up by another million-cut that too. The district can afford to give teachers a 20%, retroactive, raise NOW.
This looks like a page right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook, “Rules for Radicals.”
Do the students have a right to protest to do the bidding for the teachers Union, disrupt other students trying to get an education and take an unexcused absence? Of course they do. Try this years later, when they’re working in private industry and they may find a pink slip in their inbox. That’s right, todays lesson plan being; make demands of your employer to work less, make more and continue to have suboptimal outcomes and then disrupt, make a scene and Bingo… you’ll get your way!
Who stands up for the taxpayer in this charade?
Seems like Mr. Musk recently said it best!
I just found these data which I found interesting.
California
Per-Pupil Spending $14,035 Ranked in the US #17
Public School Teacher Salaries $85,856 Ranked in the US #3
High School Graduation Rate 84.45% ↑ 0.54% Vs 2020 Ranked in the US #51
Source WiseVoter https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state/
Now use the graduation rate and look that the rate of poverty in those states. I’ll help–California and Texas have the highest poverty rates, California significantly more than other states. They are ranked 51 and 50 in graduation rates. Seems this is more correlated to graduation rates than how much is spent per pupil. Neither cause-and-effect. Also, the pay information does not take into consideration cost of living in those states. In addition, look at percentage of students homeless and in foster care. Those are the most students at risk of not graduating. California is #1 in identified students as such and yet they don’t have the highest amount of placements. Some states have additional challenges in higher percentages and yet the percentages of graduation rates are not much different. If you look at the states with higher graduations rates they have higher parent education levels, lower poverty rates, and less homeless/foster youth.