I want to thank Dr. Hawn for inviting me to write a guest post for the Piedmont Pulse. As she communicated to families on Friday, negotiations between district leadership and APT have reached a point at which both sides acknowledge that–while we have reached agreement on several points–we’re unable to make progress towards agreement on several remaining issues, most urgently the financial issues. For that reason, APT has filed for Impasse with California’s Public Employment Relations Board, which means we wish to continue our negotiations with the help of a state mediator.
During these challenging economic times, PUSD is not alone in reaching this point. Other districts who are at or very near Impasse include Lafayette, Pleasanton, Clayton Valley, Dublin, and Pittsburg. The goal in every case is to have an experienced mediator take an objective look at the issues and help find a productive path forward.
APT is confident that we will be able to find that path.
Today, I want to emphasize the many powerful core values that I believe APT and district leadership hold in common.
Above all, everyone at the negotiations table believes that Piedmont students deserve the absolute best in education. We are all passionately dedicated to the excellence of our schools, to making them places where students feel challenged intellectually as well as supported emotionally, places where everyone feels a sense of belonging, where classes are engaging and invigorating, and where “All means all.” In academics, athletics, the arts, and extracurriculars, we are committed to helping our students achieve their full potential so they can head out into the world empowered to make their mark.
We recognize that educational excellence depends directly on attracting and retaining superb educators of the caliber that have made Piedmont a “destination district” for more than a century. Anyone who spends time in Piedmont classrooms knows how extraordinary our educators are–intelligent, caring, dedicated, innovative, committed to understanding every single child and finding the best ways to help them learn and grow.
We recognize that, in order for those amazing educators to be here for our students, they must be able to survive financially in the Bay Area, one of the most expensive regions in the world. Inflation and dramatically rising health insurance costs make that prospect more daunting every year, with many teachers contemplating the painful choice of leaving the profession they love because the financial sacrifices have grown too great. Starting in January, most Piedmont educators who rely on the district’s Kaiser insurance will be shouldering a $370 a month increase in the premiums they must pay out of pocket. For people who bring home less than $4000 a month, as many of our educators do, that alone is a huge bite out of already-strained family budgets. With Bay Area inflation pushing 5%, the combined impact will mean many teachers are facing a devastating 15%-20% reduction in their effective income, when they were already struggling to make ends meet.
In large part because of the problem of teacher pay, California–and in fact the entire nation–is facing an unprecedented teacher shortage. Many veteran teachers are reaching retirement age, and not enough young people are entering teacher preparation programs. Schools are also facing severe shortages of psychologists, nurses, counselors, interventionists, paraeducators, and administrators. Districts are already in fierce competition for the most talented candidates, and APT and district leadership all recognize that Piedmont will need to marshal its best resources to bring those candidates here for our students, and to keep our current educators in PUSD schools.
At the same time, we acknowledge our district’s very real financial challenges. We are a small, non-basic-aid, unified district, with few students in categories that bring higher levels of state funding. As with almost all California districts, we are experiencing declining enrollment, which results in further reduction in funds. Nonetheless, we must fulfill all California state mandates–the universal meal program, Transitional Kindergarten, Title IX improvements to girls’ athletics, increased contributions to CalPERS and CalSTRS retirement funds to ensure their solvency, and a wide array of individual services for students according to their IEPs. These are all inherently good things, and they are vital to keeping our schools strong. However, LCFF funding is seldom sufficient to cover their full costs.
In addition, PUSD is committed to wonderful programs that most districts don’t provide, but which have been essential to Piedmont’s strength: our Wellness Center, the counseling programs we offer even at our elementary schools, our teacher librarians who do amazing work to inspire our students’ love of reading and research, our one-to-one Chromebook initiative, our rich Art and Acting offerings, our groundbreaking Affinity Mentors program, and fascinating elective classes like Guitar Engineering and Film Studies and Marine Biology that let students dive deep into their intellectual passions.
Piedmont educators value all of these things profoundly. Our students need and deserve them. Thankfully, we have our parcel taxes and the tireless work of the Piedmont Educational Foundation to support our rich array of programs.
But even with that extraordinary support from our community, PUSD finds itself in a difficult situation. Last spring, in the wake of considerable unexpected expenses in 2022-2023, even with elimination of two positions, the district felt it might not meet the required 3% reserve, and submitted a “qualified” budget to Alameda County. While PUSD budget projections show the financial picture improved somewhat over the summer, the district office tells us now that they have only enough uncommitted funds to offer a 2% salary increase to educators, with no increased help with rising health insurance costs. The Board has offered a commitment of somewhat larger increases for the next two years: 4% for 2024-25 and 3% for 2025-26.
While APT acknowledges the district’s financial constraints, and greatly appreciates the commitment to prioritize better pay for educators in upcoming budgets, the economic reality is that a 2% salary increase amounts to a serious effective pay cut for this year. Teachers will simply be even less able to pay their basic bills than they were last fall. The state’s statutory COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) of 8.22% is intended not only to help the district pay its internal expenses, but also to help teachers pay their own actual living expenses–rising costs for rent, groceries, gas, as well as the very large health insurance increase that under the district’s current offer falls entirely on us. In APT’s view, when the district claims that only 2% of the 8.22% COLA (less than a quarter) can be passed on to teachers, the district is assuming that all internal costs are covered first, and only what is left over afterwards can be shared with educators. In refusing to settle for the current 2% offer, APT is standing firm in asking for our proportional fair share of COLA.
In just the last few days, several Bay Area school districts have settled contracts with their teachers. Benicia teachers will be receiving a raise of 8.22%. San Francisco Unified has reached a settlement for a two year contract with a $9,000 raise for everyone this year, and a 5% raise for next year. Sausalito / Marin City, whose salary schedule is very close to Piedmont’s, reached an agreement that will give educators a total 13% raise by the time they enter their classrooms next fall.
We do believe PUSD leadership wants to see our educators paid a true living wage. We believe they share APT’s interest in ensuring what is best for our students, which is ensuring we have the best educators in our schools. But at this time, we cannot reach an agreement about how to make that happen.
In addition to reaching out to PERB for help with mediation, we are reaching out to our community for help in finding both short and long-term solutions to the financial challenges we need to overcome. We recognize that we will need to come at this issue from multiple angles. We must work for legislative solutions that increase overall funding from the state. We must work to increase enrollment, including encouraging resident children to choose Piedmont over private schools, and encouraging the highest possible rates of attendance for currently-enrolled students. We must work to increase donations to PEF, and we must consider any and all other means of providing more ongoing funding to our schools.
Again, I want to thank Dr. Hawn for giving APT the opportunity to share our perspective through the Pulse. APT wants to be as transparent as possible with the wider Piedmont community, and APT believes–as I know Dr. Hawn does–that our schools are strongest when we have clear and open communication among all stakeholders. We encourage community members to visit APT’s website to join our email list and stay in touch with us.
As we continue through the process of mediation, APT wants to express our commitment to collaborating with district leadership and the Piedmont community to reach a viable resolution to our negotiations. We love being educators, and we love our students. At all times, we share an unfailing dedication to ensuring that the future of Piedmont schools will continue to be as bright as ever.
