AnonymousSource: Santa Barbara Unified School District
The Santa Barbara Unified School District Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday evening to approve a three year compensation agreement with the Santa Barbara Teachers Association (SBTA), both confidential and management employees. The agreement includes the following salary increase:
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3.5% effective July 1, 2021
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2.5% effective July 1, 2022
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2% effective July 1, 2023
The total salary increase is 8% over a three year period. The district also agreed to cover 70% of any health insurance premium increases over the next three years, and the addition of a bilingual stipend to qualifying certificated employees.
Superintendent Hilda Maldonado and school board members shared the vision to ensure stability and continuity for district employees. This three-year contract represents that vision and the value they place on the health and well being of our workforce.
“A three-year compensation agreement is quite rare, but is a benefit to both the district and employees by providing financial stability across our system,” said John Becchio, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources. “We are pleased that we were able to reach this agreement with a win/win result.”
Throughout the 2020-2021 school year, district and representatives from SBTA have met to negotiate wages and benefits, working conditions, and new language for the 2021-2024 contract. Santa Barbara Unified has not yet reached an agreement with the classified employees union, the California School Employees Association (CSEA.)
Kare McBride, SBTA president, said “members are happy for these new agreements and are especially pleased about the multi-year salary and the help with increases to insurance costs. We hope that our salary and benefits will become more competitive with surrounding districts to keep and attract highly qualified educators. The bilingual stipend is a step towards meeting staffing needs for our Emergent Multilingual Students.
Further details here:
Public_District_of_Proposed_Collective_Bargaining_Agreement_AB_1200.pdf
The higher the raises, the more the district owes permanently in future employee pension obligations. Never spend one-time windfall money on ongoing personnel costs. This is a trap.
Use one time windfall money (the “covid” high tech bonus revenues ) only for one-time school infrastructure needs. Or use it to help retire the massive unfunded public pension liabilities, which now get passed on to your grandkids to pay off.
Teacher pay must be tied to teacher performance not just longevity. Or else break up the government school monopoly and pass on the money for “raises” to parents who can then best choose where they want to spend this money for their own children’s education. State needs new leadership when it comes to the largest part of its annual budget-the 50% that automatically goes to public education. We are currently not getting a good return on that investment.
Win-win for teachers and their union, you mean Becchio? Sounds about right. Hey, I get it teachers like everyone else need raises occasionally to compensate for increased costs of living. But forgive me for being upset to see the Board raising everyone’s pay over a three year extension after what they’ve done (and haven’t done) for our schhols over the last two school years here in SB.
OMG a fully paid over 1 year vacation, they fought tooth and nail not wanting to return to campus….. Now they get a raise after working a whole month…… Spoiled brats! They deserve nothing
Teachers also get COLA every year -so “cost of living” is already covered by their collective bargaining agreements based upon an agreed COLA formula. Plus the districts are also forced to pay what ever health care premiums and pension contributions get assessed every year ,which always go up – so that is more tax payer money going to “pay” teachers more every year too.
Since teachers cost tax payers more every single year due to benefits granted by contract, they do get “raises” but they refuse to see these additional tax payer expenses per teacher as their “raises”. Pays to get fully informed about what we are paying now for each teacher, how much this amount increases every year and what unfunded future obligations are run up every year that someone else will have to pay for when these teachers retire and ever higher pension benefit rates.
Too bad teachers and the school board continue to misrepresent these sensitive fiscal realities and continue with their same tired mantra about being “underpaid”. We like paying our teachers well ,when they can prove they are doing superior work in the classroom.
But there is no room for these continued smokescreen misrepresentations and shakedowns, made in collusion with the school board members.
I’d feel better about this if somehow the underfunded pension and healthcare riddle could be solved. That can keeps getting kicked down the road. Teachers should be well-paid, but we should also have an honest accounting of costs and pay what it takes to balance the books. Politicians, not teachers, are the problem here, in league with the unions. Same deal with police and fire. Kind of a Ponzi scheme, where our grandchildren are the chumps.
37 kids and their parents. 20 kids is a private school.
What level of funding do you consider fully funded? Most viable pensions operate at about 80% of funding because the new employees keep paying into the system and keep it operating. Sort of like how Social Security operates, right? The Post Office is supposed to have 100% funding because the Congidiots forced them to, and it is killing them.
If you can show me some examples of pensions that have gone bankrupt on 80% funding if the company is still profitable then maybe I’ll start to be concerned.
As per the Goleta School District website:
Grade-level class size averages are under 20 in Grades K, 1, 2, and 3; and under 23 in Grades 4, 5, and 6.
wow, you know all these facts how? were you studying all zoom meetings across all the schools in our district. How many “Lazy” parents didnt help their kids during remote learning? how many “Lazy” parents didnt do what THEY were required to do for THEIR childrens education? wheres your statistics on that? “SBLETSGETALONG” blasts teachers like they are slaves….. thats not getting “along”. Teachers are underpaid for hmmmmmm….. FOREVER. if your upset about a 2% raise for a person that teaches your children…. your priorities are completely screwed up.
Citizen SB Teacher: Your “take home” pay is not what taxpayer pay you. We also pay you lavish health care benefits and pension contributions. That is what you actually make since you do not have to cover these tax-free benefits out of your “take-home” pay. Plus you work only a 180 day or 9 month year. You have three extra months to earn more income. You get automatic COLA by statute, except in the years when there is no cost of living increase. It is all done by set formula. Do you think COLA means something else – like an automatic free bonus every year? Transparent California sets out what each teacher’s full compensation package costs taxpayers – salary, benefits and pensions. If you choose to have an even more deluxe health care plan, than the district’s basic offering – usually an HMO, then that is your option but don’t blame us for not funding your choice. I think you have been listening to your unions too much, because they are never happy no matter how much they shake us down every year. You also did choose to come to a very high cost area when many starting workers have one bedroom apartments, if they can find them. Count yourself lucky to even be able to rent something in town. One assumes you did your homework before you chose to come here. Buyer’s remorse is unbecoming at this particular time of real job, income and business loss in the private sector.
That assertion is dishonest… It was obviously and definitively not more difficult…
You can say they deserve a salary increase… but you honestly can’t say this past year was more difficult for teachers.
You have to scroll though 20 pages on Transparent California for SBUSD to find a single teachers not making over $50,000, just in take-home salary for a nine month year. Everyone else makes a lot more. Here is what that $47K teachers actually costs the taxpayer in total, when all the benefits are also received. Unions decide how much of the total cost to taxpayers is allocated between taxable salaries and non-taxable benefits paid to each teacher.
XXXXX – SBUSD –
A TEACHER (2019) Total cost to taxpayers: $68,248. 11
Regular pay:$46,505.72
Overtime pay:$0.00
Other pay:$12,028.50
Total pay:$58,534.22
Benefits:$9,713.89
Total pay & benefits:$68,248.11
Pstar, separate from teacher compensation, it is in the California State Constitution that the State is required to provide free public education to the children of California. It isn’t the “lazy” parents not doing “what THEY were required to do” it was the State not doing what it was required to do. The State is the one that failed. As much as I think it was flat out disgusting how the teachers unions took advantage of the pandemic, it’s the unions job to act in the best interests of the teachers they represent (though I think they overplayed there hand and helped make progress towards school choice which will eventually hurt their members but we’ll put a pin in that). It’s the State that prioritized the teachers unions over the students, the tax paying parents, and most importantly, the California State Constitution. Blasting the individual teachers is wrong, blasting the parents is wrong, the blame lies squarely at the feet of our State politicians who throughout this pandemic prioritized special interest groups over the residents of California.
VOR – I’m speechless. I agree with you 99.9%. The unions kept our kids out of class even when the scientist and even Newsom said it was OK to go back. I will never forget that.
272 active teachers who died from covid are proof that teachers minimizing their exposure to the virus was a prudent move. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/educators-weve-lost-to-the-coronavirus/2020/04
Our local students have a 50% proficiency in English and Math. Nothing like a raise for teachers to reward them for the 50% of our students who they have failed.
Pitmix – what’s the fatality rate of COVID? You wanted schools to stay closed till August, this was (as all of your COVID posts have been) anti science and logic. Your line of thinking stole a year from our kids and did nothing to make anyone safer. You were and are the COVIDIOT.
There are 3.7 million teachers in the US… why ( in a pandemic) wouldn’t we expect .000073% of them die???? Could dive deeper into other professions… but again, .000073%
I have the upmost respect for teachers and will admit they are undervalued in our society. But, beyond the fiasco of this year, lets not forget they get summers off, winter break and spring break. I recognize the work is hard and stressful but also I am reminded of the perks when my teaching friends all go on long vacations and don’t worry about childcare come summertime. I don’t think the raises are unjustified, but overall discussions of teacher pay need to take into account they get roughly 12 weeks of vacation a year. Who else can say that?
VOR – you are correct! It’s not the teachers unions fault… there stated goal and mission is to advance the teachers situation in any/all capacity. They are in actively (in many situations) working against the good of the students.
The fault lies with us… we cede to the union power and influence… and we elect their endorsed candidates who then do their bidding.
Pit, how many teachers die driving to school each year? It’s not zero and the statistics would say it’s way more than 272. Zoom school forever won’t even prevent all teacher deaths, I’ve previously linked CDC stats that show how many fatal “accidents” happen within the home.
Voice – Check out Pit’s link. They are putting anyone that had anything to do with school (in seemingly any capacity on there). Locksmiths, carpenters, bus drivers, paraprofessionals, plant foreman’s, maintenance workers, computer technicians, etc…
They get hero pay but did their work via zoom.
11:08am – Care to elaborate…? One of the only professions to refuse to go back (against the CDC’s recommendations) and when they came back for a wildly shortened day with extra pay…
Where was the difficulty again…?
Letmego – Perhaps you got quite lucky with teachers…ours essentially punted on pretty much anything/everything. Evening study session???? That didn’t happen! Full time school? My kids go at 930 and are done at 220…so close to 2 hours less per day (honestly I actually prefer that as I think the school day is too long and starts too early…but that’s a different point!). They came back for what 10 weeks with a negotiated bonus. So they basically got wildly overpaid to babysit…and did so while the CDC was imploring schools to reopen as the closure was crushing students…especially low income and disadvantaged students.
All the teachers I know and talked to loved it…they saved quite a bit of time every day and it was simply a better and easier work situation for them and their family. I don’t blame the teachers for that…we all do what we can that is best for our own families. The blame lies with the teachers union and our elected officials…we let them fail our children…
And per CDC, 2.5% of all death certificates in the COVID count have a cause of death that cannot plausibly be connected to COVID.
But that figure is much higher for younger age groups: 35.2% under age 18 and 10.2% 18 to 29.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e2.htm?s_cid=mm7014e2_x
Duke and VOR, so easy to get you riled up by publishing facts. 272 people is a lot if you are one of them or their families or their students. Do you lack all empathy for that?
Pitmix – As always, it’s the dishonesty of your statements and stats that are the problem. Why would you think that in a Pandemic where 590k people have died, 272 wouldn’t have been people associated with schools??? It’s truly bizarre and nonsensical. There were deaths in every race, gender, age and profession…with obviously the vast majority in the elderly. Look at your list! And no…statistically speaking, 272 out of 3.7 million is not that many (.000073%)…
It all tracks with your push for paralyzing fear…but seriously…what’s the COVID death rate? Ready to come down from 3% yet or…?
It’s actually a great example of “Pitmix numbers”! Somehow the third day of a thirty day month is “middle of the month”…
IF SB teachers don’t teach summer school, they end work after June 3. A 12 wk vacation puts their start date on August 28.
But since they start work on August 13, that confirms they don’t get 12 weeks off in the summer.
Duke and his ilk still using the new math. Very sad to see.
Google “santa barbara teacher schedule” if you are able.
Citizen, thanks for sharing your experience. It won’t matter to the teacher-haters on this site, but I appreciate what you have done and what you do for our kids.
Well…this is a Santa Barbara forum…so we are kind of keyed into Santa Barbara…right? But you are right…last day of school for Santa Barbara school district is June 2nd!!!!
As you say I’m not very good on understanding information, so help me out…Is June 2nd also mid June….Pit?
Pitmix – The death of anyone/everyone is tragic…thinking/assuming that teachers wouldn’t die in a pandemic though (like anyone/everyone else) is ridiculous. If you looked at any group of people in any job (or no job at all) .000073% of them will have died this past year. That is life (errr death).
How does this .000073% number square with your stated 3% fatality rate for COVID? Willing to come down yet…or do you hate math (and the truth) so much that your going to stick with the fear mongering?
Citizenofsb – You sound like a great teacher…as I’d imagine the vast majority of the teachers are.
But there is no most teachers are working anywhere near 60 hours per week and the pay (pretty quickly) escalates up to over 100k per year with benefits and a great retirement pension. Like I’ve said, I have many teachers in my extended family and amongst my friends…and it’s by no means an easy job, but they also aren’t doing 60 hours per week, all have quite nice summers off and all agreed that the last year was horrible for their students but great for their own personal lives.