Livermore teachers seek 10.9% ongoing salary increase

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Representatives from the Livermore Education Association (LEA) were joined by more than 200 members at last Tuesday’s school board meeting where they expressed their need for a significant salary increase.

“I shared with the board that we are not intending to be adversarial, we have identified an urgent problem that needs to be addressed to ensure our students have teachers in their classrooms,” LEA President Aimee Thompson told Livermore Vine in an email. “We invited our District and Board to work with us to address this problem,” she added.

Also during the meeting, five classroom teachers shared their personal experiences of the teacher shortage in Livermore this year.

“The current state of affairs in our location — locally, in the state and in the nation — is there’s a shortage of people who want to enter educational careers and this is meeting with the fact that compensation for teachers in Livermore is significantly behind that in neighboring districts,” Thompson said in an interview, adding:

“The problem that we’ve identified is that we are unable to attract people to teach in our classrooms.”

Currently, Livermore teacher salaries rank lower than neighboring Pleasanton, Dublin and San Ramon. And, out of a total of 19 similar nearby districts — which includes Brentwood, Fremont and Hayward, among others — Livermore ranks fourteenth, according to an infographic by LEA.

At the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, Livermore schools started off with over 30 unfilled teaching positions, leaving hundreds of students without a credentialed teacher in their classrooms. Some of those positions are still vacant, according to Thompson.

“We believe a part of the solution to this problem is to increase our compensation so that we are more appealing,” Thompson said.

The 10.9% has to do with the cost of living adjustment and other ongoing money received by the district.

“If you look at last year, the 2021-22 school year, the cost of living adjustment — ongoing money received by the district — was 5.07% and the increase to teacher salary was 3%, so there was a discrepancy of 2.07%,” Thompson said. “This year, the cost of living adjustment the state paid to the district was 6.56% and the amount passed through to the teachers was 4%, so there’s another discrepancy of 2.56%,” she added.

In addition to the cost of living adjustments, Thompson said the state increased the funding to the local control funding formula by what was initially projected as 6.27% of which teachers received none.

“So if you add all of those up, that’s 10.9%,” Thompson said, adding that the figure is based on receiving a “fair share” of the ongoing increases that the district is receiving.

The district previously offered a one-time 3% bonus, prompting the union to request a higher, ongoing offer. The district then offered a 3% ongoing increase and LEA countered with the current ask of a 10.9% ongoing increase.

A negotiation session took place last Wednesday, where Thompson said the district reiterated their previous offer of 3% ongoing and retroactive to July 1.

LEA counter-offered with a different breakdown of the 10.9% — a 3% ongoing retroactive plus an additional 7.9% beginning January 2023, for a total of 10.9% added to the salary schedule, at a lesser cost to the district.

Thompson said this breakdown would allow an increase to be added to the salary schedule in time to attract new teachers to the district.

An agreement between the district and LEA has not yet been reached but the next negotiations session is tentatively scheduled for this Wednesday (Dec. 21).

Despite the compensation disparities, Thompson said that one of the benefits of working for LVJUSD that is attractive to current teachers and newcomers is the historically good relationship between the district and the teachers union. “We work together and solve problems and it doesn’t become contentious and create problems,” she said.

LEA Vice President Eileen Greenlee echoed similar sentiments but added that without compensation that’s comparable to other districts, teachers may no longer stick around.

“My fear is that the gap has become so large and at some point there’s a breaking point. At some point, teachers are saying, ‘(Livermore) was great but $20,000 more and I only have to drive 15 miles up the road,'” she said, noting that type of salary boost could make the difference between a teacher being able to send their own child to college or not.

At the school board meeting last week, the board did approve a 3% ongoing salary increase with the California School Employees Association, however, that action is separate from LEA’s current negotiations.

LEA’s request for a salary increase is also separate and unrelated to the defeat of Measure G in the Nov. 8 general election. The $450 million General Obligation Facility Bond was specific to funding school site improvements and would not have been used for teacher salaries.