A crowd supporting striking San Francisco Unified School District teachers fills Civic Center Plaza on Feb. 9. Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto could serve as a model for how to avoid strikes
Ethan Swope/For the S.F. Chronicle
Teacher strikes that West Contra Costa and San Francisco school districts had earlier this year are now rippling across the state. Union leaders statewide are signaling a coordinated wave of actions in districts throughout California.
“All these districts going out on strike — it’s not a coincidence at all,” said California Teachers Association President David Goldberg. “Everywhere in the state, there are people with unmet needs. The conditions have been ripe for a long time.”
Those concerns are understandable: California’s high cost of living and long commute times are squeezing teachers. Because state funding flows to districts based on student enrollment, families leaving California mean less money from the state for teacher salaries and benefits. But rolling strikes are not the only path. As teachers have taken to the streets in districts from Sacramento to San Diego, a small district 30 miles south of San Francisco has become a laboratory for what’s possible when leadership, labor and philanthropy work together.
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Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto serves a community facing enormous challenges: Students there are more than twice as likely as in the San Francisco Unified School District to be socioeconomically disadvantaged (88% compared to 36%) and to be English language learners (56% compared to 25%). Yet Ravenswood has achieved what San Francisco hasn’t: labor peace, philanthropic confidence and a coherent improvement strategy.
When Superintendent Gina Sudaria, a Ravenswood teacher since 1998, took the permanent superintendent role in 2020, she faced a seven-figure deficit and declining enrollment. But her long tenure and strong relationships in the district allowed her to do something revolutionary with the teachers union: collaborate. Union President Ronda White and Sudaria met monthly outside formal negotiations, reviewing salary schedules from other districts and brainstorming solutions. When formal bargaining began in the summer of 2021, they gathered not over a table but in a living room — management and union intermixed, building solutions on chart paper together.
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The result was 10% across-the-board raises and a groundbreaking new career ladder designed not just to retain good teachers, but to cultivate teaching excellence. The agreement allows teachers to advance multiple rungs on the pay scale each year by opting into an intensive professional review process, including classroom observations and work with instructional coaches.
During the 2019-20 school year, the highest annual salary a Ravenswood teacher could earn was $92,000. Six years later, a teacher who consistently receives top ratings can earn $156,418. There is no limit to the number of teachers who can receive the highest rating — indeed, the goal is a district filled with top-flight teachers. The early returns are good: Ravenswood retained 80% of its highly rated teachers last year.
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Philanthropy plays a critical role in this story. The Ravenswood Education Foundation, an independent nonprofit backed by Silicon Valley donors, provides nearly 20% of the district’s funding. But what attracted key funders — and what makes Ravenswood an outlier among the 53 other school districts in Silicon Valley — is leadership, a focus on student outcomes and trust. These elements are broadly shared not just among a few administrators but with the school board and district office, as well as site-based staff and community partners.
Together, teachers, administrators and other stakeholders in Ravenswood focus on three pillars: literacy, teacher talent and attendance. Their shared goals are bold and measurable: In reading, a target 30% of third through eighth graders scoring proficient on state reading tests (roughly equal to the current statewide average) by 2029 and 70% proficient within a decade. That’s a steep hill: Just 8.6% of students were reading at or above grade level in the 2023-24 school year, according to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. Yet a year later, that figure had increased by more than 40%, a trajectory that, if it continues at that pace, would put the district at 33% by the 2027-28 school year.
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San Francisco Unified, having just been through a painful strike, is a telling comparison. San Francisco faces challenges that Ravenswood doesn’t — a much larger system across more grades, with powerful political forces and an entrenched bureaucracy. Yet, like Silicon Valley, San Francisco is one of the most active philanthropic cities in the nation. However, little of that giving goes to the school district — just 1% of its $1.3 billion budget in 2024 came through its primary philanthropic partner, Spark SF Public Schools. Ravenswood’s experience suggests that San Francisco could change by taking risks and building a culture of trust among stakeholders.
Each of the more than two dozen districts across the state that are at an impasse in contract talks with teachers has its own challenges: from Twin Rivers and Natomas in Sacramento County to Los Angeles and San Diego. But whether a community has a strong philanthropic community sitting on the sideline or is relying on community investment in the form of public dollars, the Ravenswood principles scale: cultivating excellence, building trust among teachers, administrators and community stakeholders, and rigorous measurement focused on the most important goals. If district leaders and teachers in struggling districts seek a way forward, a visit to Ravenswood might be the right place to start.
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Brian Brennan is the Executive Director of The 21st Century Alliance, a good government group focused on solving California’s greatest challenges.