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Teachers, school staff and other community members at the San Ramon Valley Unified School District gathered outside a number of schools in the district Thursday morning to protest more than $26 million in budget cuts currently underway, with closed session labor negotiations between the district and its bargaining units scheduled this week.
The San Ramon Valley Education Association was a primary organizer in the protests outside all of the 35 campuses in the district following numerous concerns and complaints raised by students, teachers, school employees and others in the community over the budget cut package introduced by district officials in December and approved by the Board of Education at its regular meeting on Jan. 14.
“We are aware of the demonstration conducted by our teacher’s union yesterday,” SRVUSD Superintendent CJ Cammack said in a statement Friday. “SRVUSD must make significant budget reductions to ensure our fiscal stability in the immediate future. These reductions are not a desired outcome but an operational necessity, and we will continue to minimize the impact on our student programs and our staff.”
While Cammack has been candid throughout the budget cut process on the negative impacts that a reduction in funds and services will have on students and the greater community, he has also emphasized the need for those cuts, which have been a major priority since he succeeded former superintendent John Malloy starting in the current academic year.
“However, the District must take immediate action based on our fiscal reality, and we remain committed to working with all members of our SRVUSD staff and community to enact the needed budget reductions while striving to ensure that our students continue to have the best opportunities to succeed,” Cammack continued.
SRVEA president Laura Finco told DanvilleSanRamon that the teachers union stance was with students, and emphasized the union’s role in fighting back against the cuts that administrators and board members agree are set to negatively impact students and classrooms.
“Basically, we want to protect our students,” Finco said.
She pointed to community surveys and town hall discussions Cammack’s administration has led during his tenure on how to mitigate the impacts to students, and what should be on the chopping block given what is widely considered to be a budget crisis currently facing the district.
“Management ignored the community surveys and town hall discussions where parents and stakeholders said class size and students’ mental health had to be a priority,” Finco said. “Nearly 60% of the cuts directly go against what management heard from our community.”
The demands associated with Thursday’s protests consisted of doubling cuts to management – which currently come out to $2.8 million in cuts, compared with the $13 million facing educators – publishing a credible plan to increase revenue by improving average daily attendance averages, reducing spending on outside contractors, and offering an early retirement incentive to SRVEA members.
Those are topics set to be revisited in labor negotiations at the district in special, closed-session meetings this week on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Finco said that she was not optimistic about the upcoming meetings in the wake of Cammack’s statement on the protests, but added that fighting for the best outcomes for students was part of the job for teachers.
“They still intend to make these devastating cuts, and it is disappointing because the community survey and the town hall meetings very much focused on protecting our class sizes and providing providing social emotional health, and yet when you look at what is in the plan, over 50 percent of the cuts are hitting students by increasing class sizes and decreasing access to mental health services,” Finco said.
Finco noted that in addition to the 65 teaching jobs set to be cut under the current budget reduction plan, another 45 SRVEA positions were already on the chopping block thanks to dwindling ADA rates in the district.
In addition to protesters’ specific demands to the district, Finco said that the onus was on the state government to address issues in school funding throughout districts in California that have led to 32 of the state’s 997 school districts to come together for a collective bargaining campaign for full school staffing led by the California Teachers Association.
While the districts involved in that campaign don’t include SRVUSD or other Tri-Valley Districts, Finco noted that their requests from the state government have parallels.
“As educators, it is in our nature to be the mama bears and the papa bears, to be the protectors – we are with these kids every single day in and out,” Finco said.
While Finco and other union representatives at SRVUSD are set for negotiations with the district in special meetings, she noted that pressure from the community also needs to be directed toward Sacramento and encouraged supporters to assist to that end.
“The other thing that’s really important for our community to understand is this is not an isolated situation,” Finco said. “School funding statewide is in crisis, and our government and our legislators have to do something. They have to raise raise the base; they have to provide COLA augmentation for the 2025 school year, they have to pull our schools and our school district out of this mire, or it will be an incredible deficit in terms of learning loss.”
The district’s administration and union leaders are set for labor negotiations in multiple meetings this week. The agenda for Monday’s special meeting of the school board, during which the trustees will confer with the district’s bargaining team, is available here.
