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State revenues have soared
School districts statewide are trimming spending
The Dublin teachers’ union four-day strike garnered headlines and created headaches across the district.
District officials managed to keep the schools open with administrators and substitute teachers, while the Dublin Teachers Association members paraded in picket lines at entrances around the schools.
The job action drew David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, to its first day. The Weekly story quoted him telling striking teachers at an afternoon rally, “I saw your strike lines today — that is a beautiful thing to see.”
Frankly, I had just the opposite reaction. Teachers are professionals and should act as such. I don’t expect teachers to act like truck drivers or dock workers. One of former Gov. Jerry Brown’s worst decisions was allowing public employees to unionize. Now the state teachers union is one of the two unions spending the most lobbying in Sacramento $3.1 million of members’ dues in 2024 according to CalMatters. Petroleum and timber groups spent more.
Dublin teachers want salary increases, increases in money for health insurance and lower class-sizes. Reporting by the Pleasanton Weekly compared entry level, mid-career and top-level salaries with other county school districts. Dublin ranks 1st or 2nd at each level—pay issue?
The other point of contention, lowering class sizes, sounds great in theory and is important in the early elementary years where fundamental reading and math skills are taught. Once the paradigm shifts from teaching reading to reading to learn, it’s not as important. And, it’s really expensive for a district that already is cutting its budget.
What it does for the state union is potentially create more dues-paying members that maintains its clout in Sacramento. The union has been forthcoming in its goal to line up teachers contracts statewide to increase pressure on local boards and the Legislature.
For the governor and the Legislature, it’s auto pilot because Proposition 98, passed in the depth of the tough budgets in the 1990s, guarantees k-12 education and community colleges about 40% of the state budget. Given how much the budget has soared during Gavin Newsom’s term, about 60% to $327 billion. If it was spent wisely and sparingly, the state and schools should be sitting pretty,
That’s not the case—transitional kindergarten became the requirement—damaging non-profit and for-profit organizations providing preschool. There was no compelling reason for it, other than to add to district teaching ranks and dues paying members for the unions.,
>”Frankly, I had just the opposite reaction. Teachers are professionals and should act as such. I don’t expect teachers to act like truck drivers or dock workers.”
You don’t need to expect that, but it doesn’t make the reality any less real. The teachers are in a union; one of the few remaining. Collective bargaining and measures, including picketing, are expected behavior for union members. The notion that picketing makes teachers any less professional is absurd.
The district is publicly funded, and has no transparency regarding budgetary spend and has shown no accountability for large errors that administrators have been fired for elsewhere.
Teachers, firefighters and police are essential services performing important work for the good of the public and community. Cost of living increases and some sense of financial security in currently uncertain times of volatility and inflation shouldn’t be a contested issue. If you’re positioning that class sizes aren’t an issue, you should try volunteering in a k-5 or above class and re-evaluate your position. There are administrators making significantly more income for doing arguably negligible work that they’re unaccountable for.
Bring transparency to the district. Clean up waste in the administration and provide teachers with enough financial security to not have to consider secondary sources of income or earn behind the pace of cost of living. This isn’t hard. These shouldn’t be controversial issues. The grammatical errors in this article are further evidence of the need for greater attention to detail at the individual student level.
The complete lack of depth and gaslighting from the author of this piece are exactly the reason why those who remain in a position where collective bargaining is still an option need to continue flexing that option. In every instance where it’s left the equation, it’s done so at a loss to the workers that were represented by it.
Seriously, shame on people acting as if teachers are being out of place in demanding basic financial security for doing a job that’s not easy and benefits the greater good of the community.
And what an absolute sign of the times and laziness of the author to frame teachers as unprofessional when there have been severe mishandling of public funds by administrators that have gone unreported (that we know about) and a complete lack of transparency over district line item spending of our tax dollars.