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Nearly 300 teachers and their supporters took to Tuesday’s school board meeting to petition for higher teacher salaries, rallying outside district offices beforehand. The Palo Alto Educators Association hosted the rally to advocate for raises that it says would promote staff retention in the district.
Participants held colorful signs reading, “What do you want? 5.5%. When do you want it? Now!” and “WTF? Where’s The Funding?”
The district has the top paid superintendent in the county and one of the top in the state, but ranks 5th and 6th for top educator salaries in the area, said president of Palo Alto Educators Association Teri Baldwin at the school board meeting. Niche, a hub for national education review, ranked the Palo Alto Unified School District best in California.
“We are asking for a salary increase the district can afford, and to restructure our pay scale so that the beginning salaries are more competitive and shorten it,” she said. “We are a destination district for families and we should be a destination district for our educators.”
Negotiations with the teachers’ association reached an impasse in March after the district denied the teachers union’s request for a 5.5% on-schedule pay increase, quicker pay increases for new educators, a 2% off-schedule bonus for teachers who don’t immediately benefit and a 5% increase in stipends.
The district countered with a 2% on-schedule increase, a 2% off-schedule bonus, a different pay increase schedule and no stipend increase, according to the union.
Currently, the district has $135 million in reserves for the 2023-24 school year, which the educators association is urging the district to use to up salaries and reach an agreement with them.
Due to the Bay Area’s high cost of living, speakers at the meeting pointed out the stress of long-distance commutes for teachers who have to live outside of the area.
“Although money does not equate to professional motivation for teachers, salary does provide them with resources to travel, restore their energy and enrich their mental health,” said Star Teachout at the board meeting.
Other speakers asked the district to incentivize its special education teachers, citing Hawaii’s $10,000 stipend for special ed teachers in 2020.
On top of general teaching duties, special education teachers develop custom education programs for each individual student and coordinate support with specialists, Steven Davis, who spoke at the meeting, said.
“They do everything gen ed teachers do but backwards and in heels,” he said.
Lucy Filpu, who has taught at Palo Alto High School for 16 years, said her children got a first-class education in the district, which is seen as a “lighthouse district,” all the more reason to keep pace with nearby districts’ pay and the rising cost of living in the region.
“How can we as a district pay less than Mountain View, Los Altos, Santa Cara, Fremont?” she asked.
Correction: This version corrects the number of people who attended the rally. Organizers say it was nearly 300.
Shameful. We should be paying our teachers at least commiserate to what other teachers in the area are being paid.
Agreed!
How does one form an opinion here? The most simple and reliable guide is to compare how teachers are being paid in Palo Alto relative to in other school districts in Santa Clara county.
And most of the information to make that assessment is in the article. The one missing piece is that there are 31 school districts in the county.
Clearly, we are already overpaying the superintendent, who has the highest salary in the county and one of the highest in CA. That’s already very bad, because a high salary for the superintendent pulls up the salaries of the other administrators.
What about the teachers? We are overpaying them as well — their salaries already rank in the top 5 or 6 out of the 31 districts. We should aim to pay a median (middle of the pack) salary. Will that mean we get middle-of-the-pack quality teachers? No, the most qualified teachers will tend to prefer teaching in Palo Alto because they will find it more intellectually challenging and more fun: the students here are relatively smart and highly-motivated to learn.
They may prefer PAUSD positions until they literally get to “Meet the parents”. Having had our son go K-12 in the system, my fellow parents were nightmarish.
the administration overpay is ridiculous. The problem with the parcel tax is that it frees up $$$$ to pay the superintendent et al these gaudy amounts. The best budget neutral way is to cut out the administrative fat and pay the teachers more.
What is shameful are the salaries at the District Office. I won’t name names or positions, but if you look at the “Meat the Team” part of the PAUSD website you will find some folks getting paid quite a bit for job descriptions that are vague and buzzword laden at best. There is also quite a bit of redundancy. Pay hikes at that level come quicker and in general are much larger than what teachers receive.
I worked in the district for 27 years, earning all the units I could, including a master’s degree. It took me that long to reach $147,000 on the pay scale. On the flip side there is a district employee that went from $112,000 to $193,000 in just eight years. That is a $10,000 pay increase each year. If my pay tracked that person’s pay, I should have been making $185,000 in my final year.
I’m sorry, but what that person is doing is not as demanding as the work done by classroom teachers. The DO continues to add to its top-heavy rolls and continues to claim they can’t afford to give teachers a decent raise, even with a massive $135 million reserve, which is way beyond the legal requirement.
Can someone from the district state honestly why the reserve must be so big? Does it help Mr. Austin to brag about the AAA bond rating, and the dubious Niche rating splashed all over the website? Look at U.S. News ratings and you get a completely different story, one that will not be shared by “The Team”. Mr. Austin has 500,000 reasons not to care.
Agreed- we do not need so many middle managers who get paid way too much!
Edit: Meet the Team
@barronparker2
If you want PAUSD to be a “median” Santa Clara County school district, then your argument holds water. Administrators from top to bottom should get median pay too.
Good luck selling that to Austin and the board.
A teacher holding a “WTF?” sign is unprofessional and a poor example for students about how to protest effectively with class. Sad modeling from an adult.
Agree with @barronparker2. Many teachers in this district make six figure salaries and are already near the top earners in SCC county. The teachers and their PAEA have conveniently failed to mention the facts.
After PA teachers and their PA Teachers Union (PAEA) successfully lobbied to close down in person school for a full year 2020-2021 for middle and high school students, unnecessarily creating a fully acknowledged disaster for many PA students and their families that many still suffer from, PA teachers have a lot of nerve protesting for more money. Over a million students across CA had to leave the state for an education, the staggering learning loss is documented, Governor Newsom just LOST a $2 Billion dollar lawsuit by CA students bc of the learning loss, and absenteeism is still a crital issue in CA as reported by PA Online. Parents and many students were affected by the school closures, some for life (see Stanford Hoover Institute report on the $30Trillion economic loss/student learning loss/students lifelong earnings losses). The national and CA teachers unions’ role in school closure, including PAEA, in unnecessarily shutting down schools is irrefutable and fully documented. See U.S. Congressional hearings on school closures and report on Teacher Unions role in April 2023. Parents, some of who lost jobs or had to give up jobs to help w/zoom “school” during school closures and currently make NO money, are still waiting for that apology from some of the hystrionic PA Teachers and their PAEA union for damage caused to their students for closures for a year …. still waiting …..
Please note the article says the teacher’s sign read “WTF? Where’s the funding.” The WTF is standing for “where’s the funding”.
I don’t know if the union needs to answer for Gov Newsom and the lawsuits and everything under the sun as you’ve portrayed in your comment. Teachers have bills to pay today. We fund the schools to pay for all the stuff that makes PAUSD what it is. Inflation is a thing. Recruitment and retention are issues too. Sounds like you’re anti-union, which is fine, but they’re not going anywhere. So a retaliatory “no” seems beyond counterproductive.
This is amazing seeing teachers fight for a well deserved increase in Palo Alto! PAUSD asks A LOT of their teachers. Teachers are expected to attend more than double the amount of after school meetings that surrounding districts. We all know that teachers’ jobs are harder now than ever and other districts recognize this and have been increasing teacher pay. Surrounding districts are also spending more and more of their budgets on teacher salary, why isn’t “the number one district in CA”. If we are are going to claim to be the best district in CA we should pay our teachers for getting us there!
And during that whole shutdown the district never did walk throughs to see what kind of repairs and maintenance were needed to the schools. At Greene vending machines were left plugged in and stocked, heaters were still running, some at full capacity with no one around, and trees that should have been cut down were ignored. One came down on the teacher’s lunch area and destroyed tables and benches shortly after the school re-opened. Luckily it happened when teachers were not present.
So even though “Forever Name” would like to lament teachers for their selfishness during the pandemic, at least they were actually working. Zoom was no picnic, and most teachers wanted to go back to in-person, they simply did not trust district leadership to re-open in a safe manner. I could go on for days about systems and infrastructure in constant states of disrepair, all of which could have been addressed during the shutdown, but apparently that was too much effort on the district’s part. So maybe you can see why teachers did not trust the politicians at 25 Churchill to fulfill the “Promise” of safe and healthy learning facilities.
I would love to give FN a tour of my old classroom. If you weren’t around in 1980, minus the server, you could see what life was like back then.
@barronparker2: You’re right that Palo Alto students are bright and wonderful bunch; however, they aren’t any more intellectually curious or wonderful than MVLA students, FUHSD or SCUSD students. Test scores aren’t everything, and both groups of students are great. But educator morale in PAUSD is in the gutter—even by the district’s surveys (which are conveniently dismissed publicly). If a teacher can switch to making 20-30k more, with equally deserving students, commensurate benefits, less of a commute, AND admin that doesn’t low-ball our compensation as a practice (2% budget by default? Ridiculous—property taxes haven’t been that low in years and COLA hasn’t either), they will. Veteran teachers might be stuck because higher paying districts might not hire the most expensive teachers at the top of the scale, but new high school teachers would be fools to come here over MVLA or FUHSD or even SCUSD. Where’s the administrator accountability for this mess we’re in with negotiations? The Superintendent emails pass it off as if happening everywhere—it’s not happening in MVLA, FUHSD, or SCUSD; we’ll be right back in this mess again if there isn’t a dispassionate review of the missteps made by the people who made decisions here. Of equal importance to the community, however, is that PAUSD isn’t spending that money on STUDENTS either. Where’s the administrator accountability for a clear, publicly communicated plan with benchmark assessments for spending the money on all of our students (not just pay-outs on lawsuits, pet projects, etc.?). I don’t think it’s unreasonable or selfish for families who pay property taxes in Palo Alto to expect their own students will benefit from that, let along ANY students.
As a union nurse, I find it always amusing that nothing gets the entitled dander up more than a group fighting for better working conditions.
A significant chunk of our property value is tied into these world class schools. People want world class schools, world class property values, and all the other trimmings, but want to short change groups that get them there.
Good luck to the Teachers!!!
PAUSD is building up such high reserves and then shortchanging staff. And they don’t explain why, hold them accountable. They say they can’t use reserves for ongoing expenses, but they build up the reserves up with excess unspent funds each year which shows they can afford bigger raises. The district’s last offer was insulting with the growing salaries elsewhere, cost of living and inflation, and the growing challenges in the work.
Peonies may have meant “commensurate” rather than “commiserate.” Not that the teachers don’t want us to commiserate with them.