{"id":160941,"date":"2026-02-02T22:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T22:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/160941\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T22:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T22:53:08","slug":"san-diego-teachers-plan-first-strike-in-30-years-over-staffing-services-for-special-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/160941\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego teachers plan first strike in 30 years over staffing, services for special education"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Educators,<\/a>Educators, families and community members rally outside the San Diego Unified School Board meeting in San Diego on Jan. 27, 2026. The San Diego Education Association is planning to strike next month over concerns related to special education staffing and services. (Photo courtesy Natalya Hamilton of the San Diego Education Association\/CalMatters)<\/p>\n

San Diego teachers plan to strike this month for the first time in 30 years, after butting heads with the school district about special education staffing and services.<\/p>\n

More than 300 teachers rallied outside the San Diego Unified School Board meeting last week, in anticipation of a district-wide strike at 172 campuses scheduled for Feb. 26. Teachers held signs stating \u201crespect our students, respect our contract,\u201d and filed through the board room at the start of the meeting.<\/p>\n

\"CalMatters<\/a><\/p>\n

Union leaders said it was the last chance for the board to meet demands that include increased special education staffing, improved student support and teacher stipends.<\/p>\n

San Diego Unified sets special education caseloads at 20 students to one teacher, below the state standard of 28 to one. Union officials said those ratios are a point of pride for teachers, but the district isn\u2019t meeting its own standards, so many teachers have more special needs students than they can manage. That\u2019s causing education shortfalls for \u201cthe most vulnerable students with disabilities,\u201d San Diego Education Association President Kyle Weinberg said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast school year, we ended the year with the majority of the schools in the district with vacancies for special education teachers and overages for caseloads for special education teachers,\u201d Weinberg said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re seeing similar numbers this school year that are growing, that are impacting schools throughout the district.\u201d<\/p>\n

San Diego Unified has announced that it will close schools on the day of the strike, and alerted parents to find other arrangements for their children. District officials said 97% of special education jobs are filled, and said they\u2019re trying to reach an agreement with the union on other demands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

San Diego Unified is the second largest school district in California, with about\u00a095,000 students<\/a>, second only to Los Angeles Unified. The last San Diego teacher strike was in 1996, when teachers walked out of class for a week over pay and school decision-making.\u00a0San Francisco teachers<\/a>\u00a0are also voting whether to authorize a strike for the first time in nearly half a century, also partially driven by special education concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur educators are among the highest paid in the region, receive comprehensive benefits fully funded by the District, and work in classrooms with some of the lowest class size ratios in the region,\u201d Superintendent Fabi Bagula said in a statement. \u201cWe have put concrete solutions on the table that remain under consideration, and we remain committed to bargaining in good faith and reaching an agreement that keeps students at the center.<\/p>\n

According to the district, San Diego teachers earn an average of $104,898 with average benefits totalling $20,620. That\u2019s higher than some neighboring districts and the state average of $100,245 salary and $16,919 in benefits, the district stated.<\/p>\n

The union stated that while compensation is part of its collective bargaining, members voted to strike over complaints about special education staffing, not pay. Weinberg said San Diego teachers have been fighting for special education changes for seven years, and have filed grievances against the district that aren\u2019t resolved.<\/p>\n

Special education teachers at the rally described work conditions that they said lead to teacher burnout and put student\u2019s learning and even safety at risk.<\/p>\n

Kimberly Carpender, a special education teacher at Bell Middle School, said some of her students are shortchanged on academic support that\u2019s promised in their individualized education programs, the legally binding documents that spell out services. For instance, she said students who are below grade level in reading may get support in that subject, but are on their own for history and science classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re supposed to be getting 16 hours of service a week, and they\u2019re only getting eight because there are not people to provide the other eight hours of service,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not one child. It\u2019s multiple kids. And the result is those kids go home with failing grades because they\u2019re not getting help.\u201d<\/p>\n

San Diego Unified lets individual schools determine how to schedule specialized academic instruction hours, and encourages them to group students by grade level and need to maximize the amount of support they get, district spokesperson James Canning said.<\/p>\n

Mike Hernandez, also a teacher at Bell, said his classes include students with widely varied cognitive abilities and some with aggressive behavior. That makes it difficult to teach lessons that work for all of them, and also requires him to divert his attention when a student acts out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can either be his one-on-one and take him out when he blows up and flips tables, or I can support fourteen kids in 50 minutes teaching math,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cNope. I can\u2019t really do both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weinberg said those challenges leave teachers struggling to manage classes and students falling behind in learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose gaps grow larger and larger and often become insurmountable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The union is demanding that the district boost special education staffing, settle existing grievances over excessive caseloads, schedule case management days that allow teachers to do planning and student assessments, provide $4,000 stipends to special education teachers and pay the cost for general education teachers to earn special education credentials. Canning said the district is not publicly releasing its counterproposals.<\/p>\n

The district will offer makeup classes on March 9 to compensate for lost instructional time during the strike.\u00a0<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Educators, families and community members rally outside the San Diego Unified School Board meeting in San Diego on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,1354,7025,86,3797],"class_list":["post-160941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-unified-school-district","tag-special-education","tag-strike","tag-teachers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}