New Haven Teachers, District Set to Resume Negotiations Sunday

Officials from the New Haven School District and the teachers union are expected to return to the bargaining table on Sunday morning in hopes of preventing a teachers’ strike from entering its third week.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle joined the most recent bargaining session on Friday in an effort to reach a speedy resolution, but the two sides were unable to reach a deal after seven hours.

Most of the district’s nearly 600 teachers, counselors and nurses in schools across Union City and South Hayward have been picketing outside their schools since May 20 in a push for salary increases.

“Teachers are a student’s most important resource,” said Joe Ku’e 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.”

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.

“This has gone on long enough,” 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 district’s roughly 11,000 students in limbo, with the end of the school year just two weeks away.

“Students 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,” he added. “I 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.”

Friday’s 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.

But the two sides were still strikingly far apart heading into Friday’s bargaining session, with district officials saying they simply lacked the funds to come anywhere close to meeting the union’s 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 dollars’ worth of cuts every year. And we didn’t feel like we had money to offer a significant raise.”

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 district’s latest offer, it said, was “still not ratifiable by our members.”

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 last day of school before the strike started.

“It’s very disturbing. I made promises to my students that our strike wouldn’t affect them,” said Gavin Smith, who teaches at James Logan High School. “It’s very upsetting to me and we still don’t know where we stand.”

This post has been updated.