San Diego Unified teachers OK new union contract – San Diego Union-Tribune

Teachers in San Diego’s largest school district have voted to ratify a new two-year union contract, nine months after their last one expired.

About 93% of the union’s more than 6,000 members voted in favor, the San Diego Education Association said Friday afternoon.

“This agreement shows what’s possible when educators come together and advocate for their students,” union president Kyle Weinberg said in a statement.

San Diego Unified School District and its union reached the tentative deal last month after a year of bargaining, agreeing on a new contract and to settle a dispute and avoid a one-day strike over special-education staffing.

The contract includes a side agreement to prevent layoffs, restores a stipend for early education teachers and adds targeted staffing solutions for special education shortages.

It also gives teachers 2.5% annual cost-of-living pay raises — provided the state settles up the funding that districts are owed under Proposition 98. San Diego Unified’s board president, Richard Barrera, has said that language incentivizes both the district and union to fight for state funding.

Still, those raises are lower than the ones provided in teachers’ previous three-year contract.

That last contract, ratified in 2023, expired last summer, and the new one comes after a year of bargaining. It still needs to be approved by the board.

But the portion of the agreement that aims to prevent layoffs has led to some level of strife among district staff — especially after the district approved more than 200 cuts to non-teaching jobs. The move is expected to lead to layoffs for about 70 people.

The union’s contract push came amid a broader campaign by unions statewide, with a focus on special education staffing.

“While educators had previously secured contract language to protect caseloads and ensure staffing, the district failed to uphold those agreements despite escalating educator responses,” it said in a Friday news release.

Late last year, SDEA filed an unfair labor practice charge with regulators over special education teachers’ caseloads. It was planning a one-day strike over the issue — what would have been its first strike in decades.

Ultimately the union and the district agreed on contract language to guarantee special education teachers an automatic monthly stipend whenever they exceed caseload caps.

The school board is expected to vote on the contract next month, said spokesperson James Canning.