Sacramento, CA – Jorge A. Aguilar, Superintendent of Sacramento City Unified School District School, provided the following update on negotiations with SCTA and SEIU to District families and staff:

Dear SCUSD Families:

You may have already learned that the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) and SEIU Local 1021 announced a planned strike to begin on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. We will keep you informed as we attempt to reach an agreement with our labor partners to avert a strike.

As we wrote previously, we want to do everything possible to continue serving our students during the strike. However, our district operates under limitations that make it difficult for us to keep our schools open during a strike. Specifically, because substitute teachers in SCUSD are represented by SCTA we are significantly limited in our ability to hire substitute teachers to fill in for those who strike.

Given these circumstances, we have made the difficult decision to close all campuses if a strike takes place beginning on Wednesday, March 23, 2022.

We understand that many in our community will ask whether they can volunteer to keep schools open.  Unfortunately, fingerprinting is required for volunteers and the short window of time is not enough to approve volunteer clearances.

Since last summer, the district has been working to reach agreements with labor partners that address issues related to COVID for this 2021-22 school year only. Because our district had not reached an agreement with SCTA on these COVID-related issues, the district declared impasse in these negotiations in December 2021. Neutral mediators were called in to facilitate talks, but after several sessions the mediators recommended that both parties participate in a Fact Finding process, which is the next step under California law. A report from the chair of the three person panel that led the Fact Finding process was issued on March 17 and may be read in its entirety here.

The Fact Finding report is advisory, and is intended to help parties resolve differences so a formal agreement can be reached. Despite concerns about how some of the recommendations could impact our long term fiscal stability, we are committed to finding solutions that meet the needs of our students and staff.

We remain committed to do all that we can to avert a strike and expect to continue successor contract negotiations on Monday in an attempt to reach an agreement with SCTA.

This is a painful and difficult decision to make, especially when our students have experienced so much trauma and disruption to their learning over the last two years and recognize the ripple effect that school closures have on our entire community.

During this difficult time, please remain in community and know that we will do our best to meet the needs of our district community.

Jorge A. Aguilar
Superintendent
Sacramento City Unified School District

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