SBUnifiedBy the Santa Barbara Unified School District
The Santa Barbara Unified School Board of Trustees approved a $2,500 stipend for employees throughout the district.
The proposal was brought forward after faculty and staff members brought concerns about the rising costs of housing, inflation, and healthcare expenses during a recent listening tour at the district’s schools. The superintendent, select board members, union leaders, and cabinet members visited all schools and invited staff to share their concerns. Inflation was brought up frequently during these meetings, along with other topics like professional learning and curriculum needs.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, the board approved a $2,000 one-time payment to employees and a $500 one-time payment for increasing healthcare costs. Additionally, substitute teachers will be receiving a $1,250 stipend per semester if they worked a total of 45 assignments over that time period.
The payments will cost more than $4,958,000. It’s funded by the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant.
“I have been meeting with employees and have heard firsthand how hard the cost of inflation here is, particularly for those who care for family members, whether it’s childcare or elder care. We care about our employees and their families. We are committed to looking for ways to improve our employees’ compensation and benefits, and we hope this helps to ease some of that pressure,” said Dr. Hilda Maldonado, the District’s superintendent.
Employees can expect to see the check arrive next month.
I am concerned about this money being given to employees district wide which includes many in admin. like the assistant superintendents, and superintendent who
are generously compensated some over 200k and benefits. I think that money should be going to the unmet needs of the students and teachers who make less than 100k . Our district has said in years past that they don’t have enough money for summer of learning or interventions for the thousands who are behind. Superintendent and vice superintendent’s perks could be detrimental to students whose parents can’t afford tutors and need more help than our district is in the habit of giving. Would be good to see a clear, transparent breakdown of who/what Learning recovery monies is specifically going to.
No ageism intended on my part. There are many older teachers who have e been around a long time and do things a little differently who are absolutely outstanding. I think these teachers are assets to the community. I was taught by some teachers like that back in the day myself. I did not a intend to generalize and I apologize if it I came off that way, definitely do not intend to knock older teachers across the board. However, my point stands. Years of service is the only consideration used to decide what teachers are paid and who is let go first. This is arguably a form of ageism, and it does not put the best interests of the f students first. I dont understand why it should be a point of controversy to suggest students should be the number one priority in the public education system and teachers should be compensated based on how well they perform in educating students.
Some more context on how the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant is supposed to be used (see below). Am I missing something or did the School Board misappropriate these funds?
The budget provides nearly $8 billion for the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant, which would provide funding to local educational agencies (LEAs) to increase or stabilize the amount of instructional time provided to students, provide learning supports to students, and address other barriers to learning, like providing mental health services or counseling. We wanted to clarify that, unlike the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant, which will go out on a per-pupil basis, this funding will go out to LEA’s based on their unduplicated pupil count.
What about our students? This is another misuse of funds intended to benefit students — and teachers — with classroom aides, reduced class sizes, individualized instruction. WAIT: Tax Paid Housing for teachers is next . Do you get $105,000 for life? Check your self-funded pension
PLEASE CHECK OUT:
2013–2021 salaries for Santa Barbara Unified | Transparent California
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/school-districts/santa-barbara/santa-barbara-unified/
We have local teachers paid up to $233,000 per 7-month academic year with lifetime pensions. We have too many administrators and must put students first.
7 month academic year? Since when is summer 5 months long? Your comment is chock full of misinformation, SBWOMAN
I am all for paying teachers more at all levels of K-12 education. I am even for paying school admin more if it means you are getting professional managers who know how to effectively measure performance. The problem is the Teachers Union that undermines administrators ability to have a performance based approach to paying good teachers more and getting rid of the bad ones. You can then attract more teaching talent.
To Alexblue’s point about joining the school board – yes 100%. The problem is what the school board needs is a fiscal conservative mindset. This type of person will never get elected.
Sure hope some of you that know the system and want to do something good are applying for the vacating looser cap’s seat , the cheerleader that brought in the worst superintendent that has done the worst damage to our schools in history . The “sisters” as this board collectively calls themselves probably already have decided in advance who the ” machine” wants.
It’s such a sham. They don’t care about the kids. Good for SFO for recalling their School Board last year! Why not here?
The reason they need to address “inflation” is not stated… “Inflation” happens when you mis-manage our country. Didn’t they (Teacher’s Unions) support the democratic ticket…? Don’t they support the nearly $100 BILLION to fund the Ukrainian war …? Don’t they support shutting down the petroleum industry…? What about the 1.9 TRILLION dollar “American Rescue Plan…? The above all have consequences that support inflation.
It’s extremely uncommon for anyone in any public or private profession to include all compensation (medicare contributions, health and life benefits, mandated SDI costs, stock options, etc) when stating how much money one makes. I would bet no one here does that. 99.9% of people would quote their annual salary or hourly wage only. So why do people look at Transparent California when talking about how much money public school employees make? My only answer to this question is that it shows seemingly inflated dollar amounts that back up their antipathy to public schools and reinforce their political perception that teachers are lazy money-grubbing whiners. The actual SBUnified teacher salary schedules are here: https://www.sbunified.org/employment/salary-schedules . As you can plainly see, the highest teacher salary in the district is $102K, or not enough to buy even the cheapest house in Santa Barbara.
Remember 7-month job for $102K up to over $200K at MUS, with Cold Spring teachers up in $180s. No employer guarantees compensation for a single employee to buy a home anywhere. Most working buyers build equity to afford to buy hear.
sbdude: transparent california gives figures for salaries and also benefits given seperately. Many teachers at Montecito Union for example make 105k and 145k if you include benefits. Most teachers don’t make this much and could use bonus but some don’t need it and many in administration make well over 200 k and 260K if include benefits.
Salaries for Montecito teachers are more like $145K to $210K. SBUSD Trustee Alvarez who works at MUS is over $300K. School Administrations are over $330K. The accountant at small 180 student Cold Spring has a ‘ME TOO clause so whatever Supt is paid he is paid, plus board gave him unilateral authority to enter into contracts including construction contracts for District taxpayers. The school board is the only oversight. They’re a joke. With increasing property tax revenues with 50% for schools watch salaries for administrators, with no business or performance risk, increase to over $400k with 90% lifetime pensions. It’s our money intended to brn fit students not top heavy administration.
Great commentary. Love the feedback.
I’m the Director of Research at Transparent California, thought I’d throw a few facts into the discussion.
First, on the actual topic of this post – the pay of Santa Barbara Unified staff.
We collect that data, using public records requests to obtain data straight from the district’s own payroll records. If we look at that data, we can see that in 2021 the median total pay and total compensation (including the cost of benefits) for full-time SBUSD staff was:
Administrators $126,395/$151,863
Certificated $93,131/$112,498
Classified $51,214/$65,169
SBUSD data can be found on our site at:
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/school-districts/santa-barbara/santa-barbara-unified/
Now, to address some of the issues brought up by commenters regarding Transparent California.
A-1671036613 “”Transparent California” is just one of the many names used by the tax-exempt “free-market think tank” Nevada Policy Research Institute (NPRI).”
Yes, NPRI does more than Transparent California. Similar to how Facebook is “just one of the many names used by” Meta, or Pizza Hut is just one of many names used by Yum Brands.
As for disclosing funders, what does that have to do with the data itself? If I was a paid employee of the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company and I told you the sky was blue, would you say “no it isn’t, you get paid to say that!!”
And, speaking of pay, my total compensation from NPRI for managing the data collection process on Transparent California last year was $8,000. Email us (records@transparentcalifornia.com) and I’ll send you a copy.
By the way, I’m posting under my actual name, not a pseudonym as some seem to prefer.
GOLETAISGOOD “the posted salaries that many are referring to include statutory benefits (include insurance costs etc and should not be confused with what these people actually take home. “
No, the data does not include statutory benefits. Only paycheck compensation plus optional additional costs – like retirement contributions by the district and payments for healthcare premiums by the district.
MM1970 “ I get benefits at my company, and they cost about the same as teachers’ benefits.”
If true, you work for a VERY generous company. The total contribution to teacher retirement on their behalf by their employer in 2021 was 26.48% of their salary (to CalSTRS). In private industry companies contribute 6.2% to social security plus an average 4% 401K match. Total 10.2%. That’s it. Which means teachers get about 16.28% of their pay more than that in retirement contributions.
With a median pay in SBUSD of $93,131 that means they get $15,162 more than private employees do – every ear. If a private employee got that much and put it into the average 401K for 30 years, it would be worth over $2 million.
Is $2 million not enough to be worth considering?
“the average public school teacher works about 52.8 hours a week during the school year, which when calculated out yearly comes out to being 1900-2000 hours a year. “
The normal teaching “work year” is 185 days. 185 days is 26 weeks. 26 * 52.8 is 1,395 hours, nowhere near 1900-2000. May want to check that calculator.
There are other studies that peg the average work week of a teacher more in the high 40’s, but we can go with your number. Using your numbers, a full time teacher works about 700 hours a year less than a full-time private employee. That’s just a fact.
SBJOE “If you are taking about the data for Todd Ryckman in 2020, (which is salary and benefits), he was not a teacher.”
Just so you know, this data comes direct from the district’s pay records, and once accepted we send an email to the person who gave it to us to recommend they review to make sure there were no errors. We received no notification from SBUSD that the data posted had any errors in it. If they feel there are errors they can send us a revised data set any time and we’d be happy to post it.
“While some teachers make around $100,000, most are in the $60,000”
Median is $93,131 in 2021, which means half make more and half make less. Very few SBUSD teachers make $60,000 or less. The starting salary was $57,200. Only three full time teachers are listed making less than $60,000.
SBDUDE “It’s extremely uncommon for anyone in any public or private profession to include all compensation (medicare contributions, health and life benefits, mandated SDI costs, stock options, etc) when stating how much money one makes.
Neither do we. See answer above to GOLETAISGOOD
Thanks for the link to the salary schedules, but as a data source we would rely on the district’s own pay records (as reported to the IRS) over a printed piece of paper.
Thanks to all, love the conversation!
Is that supposed to be insightful commentary? Would love to hear what you think is incorrect, would that be too much to expect in a rational debate?
Correction, the starting teacher pay in SBUSD in 2021 was $52,816 (per the CDE data.) My error, but does not change the fact that only three teachers made $60K or less that year…