Sequoia Union teachers rally at high school board meeting to lobby for higher pay

Teachers in the Sequoia Union High School District are demanding increased salaries to keep up with the high cost of living in the Bay Area as they seek a new two-year contract.

About 40 teachers and and other certificated workers, all members of the Sequoia District Teachers Association (SDTA) union, showed up to the Oct. 11 school board meeting while others participated via video conferencing to press their case during public comments.

Those attending in person brought a bevy of large signs with messages such as “Invest in our children’s futures” and “Increase our pay so we can stay.”

The union plans for another such showing at the board’s next meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 25.

“Retaining quality teachers has been the biggest challenge for our school district,” Menlo-Atherton High science teacher Rachel Richards said, addressing the board. “Since I began teaching here over a decade ago, the cost of living here is exorbitant, and our salaries do not reflect this.”

Those conditions drive good teachers away and force the district to continually expend the effort to find their replacements and bring them up to speed, Richards said.

“I have watched awesome teachers come to M-A (and) grow their teaching practice and time and time again, they leave to a more affordable area,” she said. “I cannot tell you how heartbreaking this is to lose quality teachers, colleagues and friends year after year. It’s exhausting to have to continue to hire and train and hire and train new teachers in this futile cycle over and over again.”

Menlo-Atherton history teacher Candace Bolles told the board that she, like many of those who do choose to keep teaching at the school, have to drive long distances.

“I myself cannot afford to live in this community,” Bolles said, “and I spend an hour each day commuting in the morning and another hour in the evening commuting home. Our students deserve quality educators, and quality educators deserve to be fairly compensated. I implore you to instruct the district to pay our educators what they are worth and what they deserve.”

Menlo-Atherton senior Amala Raj has noticed the fatigue of teachers who have to endure lengthy travel to and from the district.

“I have watched as my teachers moved increasingly further away from the district and grew increasingly weary with their shockingly long commutes and with the extraordinarily and uniquely high cost of living in this district,” Amala said.

The kind of pay increase the union wants would help retain teachers, she said.

Not giving teachers “adequate raises is effectively a pay cut,” she added. “I believe that this is wrong, and I’m disappointed to have seen this happen in the past few years. We are hemorrhaging teachers. Just in the past few months, we’ve lost some of the most dedicated and qualified teachers at our site.”

Following the comments from union members and their supporters, district Superintendent Crystal Leach expressed appreciation for the teachers and optimism in moving forward through contract negotiations.

“I would like to acknowledge our teachers in this room and our teachers that are attending online,” Leach said. “I want you to know that I see you. I see your signs, and I am very hopeful that we will continue to make progress at our next section session towards the end of the month.”

The union, which represents 605 classroom teachers, counselors, librarians and other non-management, certificated employees in the district, is pursuing a contract for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.

“We are currently working without a contract,” SDTA President Edith Salvatore said in an email to The Almanac. “We felt it was time for the trustees, who determine bargaining parameters for the district’s negotiating team, to hear directly from our members how discouraging (Sequoia Union’s) financial proposals have been.”

SDTA is calling for an 8% salary bump for this current year and 7% for 2024-25, Salvatore said. In contrast, the district has offered 4.75% and 2.5%, respectively.

“The negotiations process began in March, and we’ve been at the table since May, having met six times already,” she said. “The district has unprecedented reserves at a time when the cost of living has increased by more than 8% and districts around us have been receiving much larger salary increases than we have. Our members are frustrated that the district is in a position to pay us better but instead offering raises that lag behind even the property-tax revenue increases the district received.”

District board President Rich Ginn told The Almanac in an email that he and his fellow trustees understand and support the need to raise employees’ pay but have to stay fiscally prudent.

“We are limited to only pay what we receive in revenues that are not certain,” Ginn said, “and we cannot put the financial condition of the district at risk in the event that future property-tax increases are lower than past increases have been.”

Still, he remains confident that the district and SDTA will reach an outcome reasonable to both. “We are optimistic that our negotiating teams will find a good balance soon and come to agreement,” he said.

Salvatore noted that the two sides have made headway in other areas.

“We’ve come to agreements around our head counselor workload and stipend to make the job more manageable and more attractive,” she said. “We’ve also tentatively agreed to create a committee to review counseling and other student services to address caseload concerns there as well as a committee to examine stipends for athletics and other co-curricular supervisions, i.e., dance, drama, music, yearbook, etc.”