San Diego Educators Demand Schools Students Deserve

Interview with Kyle Weinberg, President of San Diego Education Association

Jeff Rosenberg: We are speaking today with Kyle Weinberg, President of the San Diego Education Association. SDEA is part of the We Can’t Wait campaign, a statewide effort we covered recently during the launch on February 4th. We are excited to have you on with us to talk about how educators in San Diego are fighting for public education and the lives of educators and students, inside and outside the classroom.

One of the central issues of the We Can’t Wait campaign and SDEA’s contract campaign as part of that effort is to address the lack of adequate resources at the local, state, and federal level for public education. What is the root of this funding crisis and why is it so central to the campaign?

Kyle Weinberg: We have seen the devastation of public education in California since Prop 13 was passed in the 1970s. Prior to that, California had almost free higher education, free summer school for all students. But today we have some of the worst class sizes and ratios of students to support professionals in the country.

We're the wealthiest state in the country, and the fifth largest economy in the world if California was its own country. Despite that, we're funding schools at less than half of the national average, and that's just criminal. Our campaign is pushing for the state to increase funding to our public schools. California serves the highest need population in the country in our schools, and yet our funding definitely does not reflect that. Ultimately that's because billionaires and corporations are not paying fair taxes. It’s not impossible either. New York funds schools at almost twice what California funds public schools already.

JR: What do you see as the day-to-day consequences in the classroom for educators and students due to this underfunding in California's public education system?

KW: In San Diego, for example, we see vacancies for special education and early childhood education go unfilled year after year. And that means that educators' caseload of students with disabilities are higher than our contractual limit, which makes it much harder for us to get students the support that they deserve and need.

We're paying educators in San Diego, especially early career educators, wages that just don't keep up with the rising cost of living in San Diego. The average one-bedroom apartment in San Diego is $2,300 a month, and they're definitely going to be spending more than 30% of their gross income on their housing, which isn't sustainable. How are we expected to make it work?

We can't afford to live near the schools where we teach. So we're seeing educators living an hour away from our schools. Now educators who have caseloads that are well over our limits are also spending the equivalent of a part-time job just commuting. These commutes are not contributing to climate justice as a district. And educators end up quitting because of those commutes and because of the added stress of not being able to live in the communities where we teach. Ultimately, we're losing a lot of special education teachers to other districts that pay higher for special education.

JR: SDEA is blazing a bold path forward on many of these demands beyond the bread and butter issues around pay and benefits. There are a range of ambitious demands that many might be surprised to see on the bargaining table for a union contract. Some of these are demands to protect students and communities – including protecting immigrant students and families from ICE raids in our schools, defending LGBTQ youth inclusion and health education, and teaching the real history of Black and Latino communities in the U.S.

Why has SDEA found it so important to take on these issues at a time when the right-wing is attacking our schools and educators on all these fronts?

KW: This isn't the first time that public education has been under attack by the federal administration. We faced these kinds of threats with Nixon, with Reagan, and with No Child Left Behind that started with Bush and continued with privatization efforts under Obama's administration.

As in past eras where movements came together to have a unified front to protect public education and protect our most vulnerable students and communities, we again are—as a labor movement and as union educators—compelled to be part of that movement to protect public education, protect our students, and protect workers in our schools. We are part of a larger movement for education justice, for racial justice, and we have a long history as a union of coming together with community allies to push our demands around the schools our students deserve.

So this is continuing that long trajectory, and we have that duty to be proactive in defending our schools, and we are prepared to do that with this contract campaign.

JR: Are there ways that you've seen attacks manifest in San Diego in particular?

KW: We saw in the past when immigration raids increased in our communities, that students were scared to go to school, that families were scared to drop off students, and that's why our district passed a sanctuary policy [that San Diego schools will not cooperate with ICE beyond what is required by law] during the last federal administration that is still in place today. Along with community allies, we ensure those policies were recently updated.

We're also seeing on a national level the threats to go after our most vulnerable LGBTQ students. We have programs in place in our district, but we want to strengthen those supports for LGBTQ students with what we're proposing with bargaining and what we'll be organizing around. And so we want to make sure that if there's any potential targeting of our students, of staff, of communities that we serve, that we are ready as a union and have binding contract language that we can implement and stand united for each other.

JR: SDEA is also bringing forward demands for community schools, meaning programs for expanded social services to meet the wide range of unmet needs for educators and their families. This includes truly groundbreaking demands for affordable housing and broader social services provided through community schools. What is the history and vision for the union’s fight for affordable housing?

KW: We've been advocating for community schools in San Diego Unified since 2018, which we view as an antidote to privatization efforts and right-wing attacks. We initially fought for and won a housing support agreement where the district had to establish a safe sleeping site at a school property by no later than June 30th of this year.

The district also has to expand housing supports that are available for students and their families through partnerships with community organizations as part of that agreement. Now the district additionally has agreed to use bond funds to build housing for educators and our families, including our children who are also students in our schools. We’re expanding that vision and those demands to include building new affordable housing for students and their families on district land.

JR: How have community members been responding to some of these demands that you're now bringing forward and some of the wins from the past?

KW: Over our last three contract campaigns now, we've been able to build a lot of momentum and grow a coalition with a wide range of community organizations. We've done that through gathering feedback from families, gathering input from community organizations and from educators on what students need outside the classroom in order to be successful in the classroom. We have started to develop our contract language that reflects these demands that we'll be presenting on February 27th.

We’re very inspired by the history of social justice fighting unions like the Chicago Teachers Union and the United Teachers of Los Angeles that have engaged in community demands campaigns with education justice coalitions to put forward an ambitious platform and win. We're also inspired by unions in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and West Virginia that led the Red for Ed statewide strikes in 2018 where they were able to extract major concessions from the elected officials in their states and get more funding for our school community.

We want to follow in that trajectory of being strike-ready to have that pressure to create a crisis that the politicians can't ignore and to win these big demands that our communities so desperately need.

JR: Many billionaires in CA pay a lower effective tax rate than the rate teachers and working families that are in these schools pay. What role are the billionaires playing in underfunding of California’s public education system?

KW: We've seen in California that entrenched interests have been able to maintain the status quo that benefits them without paying their fair share. We almost passed Prop 15 in 2020 – the Schools and Communities First initiative – which if it wasn't for the pandemic and the shutdown, we could have passed major reforms to how tax revenue is generated in California and how the public sector is funded, including our K-12 schools. We need to completely change how we generate the funding needed across the state for all public goods, including education.

With the We Can't Wait campaign, we're going to start with our school district spending their budget to reflect the priorities of working people, and then all put pressure on our state government to change the funding formula and increase the funds that are coming to our schools. The billionaires will certainly fight this every step of the process, just as they have for decades.

JR: As you approach the start of bargaining, how are you getting ready for the fight ahead?

KW: We're very excited to present our 10-point program for protection for our students and communities at the bargaining table on February 27th. At schools throughout San Diego, we'll be supporting our bargaining team with walk-ins.

We need to educate our rank and file educators, educate our family allies and community allies on the power of collective action through coordinated campaigns with ambitious community demands. There is a tried and tested practice within unions throughout the country.

We take inspiration from our history too, whether it was previous movements like the Civil Rights Movement or the LGBTQ Rights Movement or the proven practices within our own labor movement of winning our campaigns with ambitious demand. We were very excited to present together with our San Diego Education Justice Coalition. We believe that our power comes through our unity in this campaign.

And by involving other allies as equal partners in this campaign, we are able to take our campaign to the next level. When we come together, we can win big for our students and for our communities.

This will be a historic moment for California, where we have unions who have our contracts lined up throughout the state with common expiration dates, and we're on a common organizing timeline with the We Can't Wait campaign on a scale that's never been seen in this state.