The Abridged version:<\/p>\n
The Sacramento City Unified school board was considering raising pay for its trustees from $826 to $3,000 per month.<\/p>\n
After a wave of public backlash, the board pulled its proposed raises at its Thursday night meeting.<\/p>\n
The decision arrives as the school district is facing a $150 million budget shortfall and is entrenched in a political battle aimed at avoiding state receivership.<\/p>\n
This story has been updated to reflect that Sacramento City Unified School District trustees withdrew their proposed raises Thursday night. <\/p>\n
A proposal to nearly triple the compensation for trustees<\/a> on the Sacramento City Unified school board is off the table.<\/p>\n School board trustees withdrew the item from their agenda at the beginning of their Thursday night meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will pull the compensation policy and related regulation from that larger package of regulations,\u201d Kayatta told Abridged by PBS KVIE in a text message Thursday morning.<\/p>\n \t\tSign Up for the Homeroom Newsletter<\/p>\n A weekly email with news and insights into Sacramento area schools and how it impacts your students.<\/p>\n The decision to pull the proposed raises follows a wave of public backlash that ensued<\/a> after trustees posted the meeting materials outlining the planned monthly raises. The plan to walk back the initial proposal was first reported by The Sacramento Bee<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trustees had pitched raising their monthly stipends from $826 to $3,000 a month. The pay raise was considered under a new state law that went into effect this year allowing school board members across the state to raise their pay for the first time in decades.<\/p>\n The pay increase only would have gone into effect if the school district achieved a non-negative check of its finances or if the district went into state receivership.<\/p>\n The plan to raise trustee pay arrives as Sac City Unified continues to face a multi-million dollar budget crisis and remains entrenched in a political battle to avoid going into state receivership. The district is currently looking to fill a $150 million shortfall by next spring.<\/p>\n In a Facebook post, Kayatta said he heard the community feed back \u201cloud and clear,\u201d as members of the public took issue with the appearance of the board looking to increase its pay while making district-wide budget cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe draft policy and resolution missed the mark,\u201d Kayatta wrote. \u201cThis is not the time to talk about increasing board compensation, even if that increase is deferred.\u201d<\/p>\n A counterproposal<\/p>\n Steve Bruno, an employee of the district, spoke at Thursday\u2019s meeting, voicing his opposition to the original proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re telling bargaining units that there is no money for raises and you\u2019re slashing jobs and you\u2019re reducing hours to the point where employees lose benefits,\u201d Bruno said. \u201cHow you can even consider putting this on the agenda? I\u2019m just flabbergasted.\u201d<\/p>\n He also shared his own counterproposal, saying he believes the issue still needs to be addressed. Under Bruno\u2019s drafted version, trustees would still see a jump to $3,000 once they receive a non-negative budget review. But the raises would also be under the condition \u201cif and only if all bargaining units have received at least a 1% raise within the past year.\u201d<\/p>\n There would also be no retroactive backpay.<\/p>\n In addition to being a database administrator for Sacramento City, Bruno is a trustee for the much smaller Center Joint Unified School District. That board, representing roughly 4,700 students, approved raises for itself in June, up to $1,200 a month.<\/p>\n Bruno was one of two no votes against the increase.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: The Sacramento City Unified school board was considering raising pay for its trustees from $826…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-455355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455355","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=455355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}