After seven hours of negotiation on Friday, officials from the New Haven School District and the teachers union failed to reach a contract deal in a teachersâ strike that has now lasted nine days.
Most of the districtâs nearly 600 teachers, counselors and nurses in schools across Union City and South Hayward have been on strike since May 20 in a push for salary increases.
“Teachers are a studentâs most important resource,” said Joe Kuâe Angeles, president of the union. “We want to attract and retain the best teachers for our students, and this district can afford our proposal. It is time to settle this contract and end this strike.”
With final exams slated to start Monday, students stood alongside teachers at the picket line during the ninth day of the strike, May 31, 2019.
State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle joined Fridayâs negotiations in an effort to reach a speedy resolution. In a statement on Friday evening, the district said negotiations would continue on Sunday, although the union said it is ready to resume talks Saturday afternoon.
âThis has gone on long enough,â State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said Thursday in a statement about the strike. The strike, which has now outlasted similar teacher walkouts in Oakland and Los Angeles earlier this year, has left the districtâs roughly 11,000 students in limbo, with the end of the school year just two weeks away.
Majority on Twitter After 9 days of teacher strike with no cooperation from NHUSD, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond has joined the bargaining session in Union City. @WeAreNHTA teachers are asking for costs of living adjustments to be reflected in their contract.
âStudents are losing out on quality educational minutes with their teachers that they have had all year, and teachers want to be back in the classroom, but are faced with the difficult decision to stand up for themselves,â he added. âI am happy to do what I can to help with this strike, but I want it known that my priority is to end it, and I will do what I can to encourage all parties to stay at the table until a resolution is reached, preferably as soon as possible.â
Fridayâs talks follow an ultimately unsuccessful marathon of negotiations over Memorial Day weekend and earlier this week. Although a deal remained elusive, district and union negotiators have come slightly closer this week to reaching a compromise.
At the onset of the strike the union sought a 10% raise over two academic years, but has since lowered its demand to a 3.7% cost-of-living raise for the 2018-19 school year and an additional 3.26% bump for 2019-20.
The district, which had initially put on the table a 1% raise for next year and a one-time 3% payment, is now offering a one-time 3% pay increase for this year (to be paid retroactively) and a 2% increase for the 2019-20 school year.
Still, the two sides were still strikingly far apart heading into Fridayâs bargaining session, with district officials saying they simply lacked the funds to come anywhere close to meeting the unionâs current demands.
John Mattos, a spokesman for the district, said New Haven teachers are already the highest paid in Alameda County, leaving very little room to maneuver.
“We are a declining enrollment district who is deficit spending,” he said. “We’re making millions of dollarsâ worth of cuts every year. And we didn’t feel like we had money to offer a significant raise.”
Gavin Smith, a teacher at James Logan High School and co-picket captain said he hoped that the strike would end soon.
District teachers make an average of $96,544 a year, the highest in the county, but unlike some neighboring districts, they also pay full health care premiums, which union members say can add up to at least $20,000.
“Our members pay all healthcare costs out-of-pocket,” the teachers association said in a statement earlier this week. “We know the district can afford to give their teachers COLA (cost of living allowance) to help us keep up with the rising cost of living in the Bay Area.”
The districtâs latest offer, it said, was “still not ratifiable by our members.”
New Haven Teachers Association on Twitter Searles teachers and colleagues from other sites remain strong on day 9 of our strike We demand a fair contract now! #WeAreNHTA #RedForEd #ForOurStudents #WeAreCTA https://t.co/tldF8XmsKX
The school year ends June 13, and graduating seniors have been preparing to take final exams starting Monday. But if the strike is not resolved before then, the district said it may have to calculate grades last entered by teachers on May 17th, the day before the strike started.
âItâs very disturbing. I made promises to my students that our strike wouldnât affect them,â said Gavin Smith, who teaches at James Logan High School. âItâs very upsetting to me and we still donât know where we stand.â
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