Happy First Day of School!

Several of my dearest friends are heading for school for the first time as incoming kindergarteners. We have had great conversations on what they hope for their kindergarten year. The top item on each of their lists are new friends.

For students, parents, school workers and their community supporters, the first day of school is a special day. It’s the beginning of new academic year-and it brings the vision of future academic success in the young scholar’s year. It is also exciting for the new teachers that start their teaching career. Approximately 50% of teachers leave teaching within the first five years-low pay is one of the reasons that they give for leaving the profession.

This year, SFUSD’s two largest unions starts the new school year without a contract. UESF’s contract ran out on June 2004. Local 790’s contract ran out in June 2005.

The District called an emergency closed Board Meeting to discuss a possible action by Local 790 tomorrow (the first day of school). SFUSD’s website reports that at that meeting, they approve to offer a contract to Local 790-which according to SFUSD, was rejected by their union leadership.

SFUSD’s FY 05-06 budget for employees’ salaries is $267,569,440. Certified staff represented by UESF receives $200,510,140 of the total with the remaining amount going to classified personnel (many of them represented by Local 790).

None of these employees have received a raise in three years. Nor has the District put any type of placeholder for raises in the three budgets that they prepared for each of the last three fiscal years.

To give everyone a 3% raise, the District would need to invest $8,027,079 or approximately 81 cents per student per instructional day. To give everyone a 4% raise, the District would need to invest $10,702,776 or $1.08 per student per day.

So basically the District has a choice-do they invest the price of a Wall Street Journal or New York Times for each student to ensure quality workers stay in the District or do they continue to investing the price of a free newspaper on their student’s future and simply hope that quality workers stay as the cost of living in the Bay Area goes up.