Mason Elementary

San Diego Unified School District always does its best to support its educators. We’ve been told by some of our own educators that we’re the school district California Teachers Association (CTA) considers the gold standard for how a school district should work with its labor partners during bargaining.

Our District has consistently collaborated with our labor unions to reach agreements year after year that proudly put the health and wellbeing of our educators at the center of our work, and we expect this year to be no different.

The San Diego Education Association (SDEA) is just one of the seven labor unions representing our dedicated employees. We appreciate everything our educators do for our students, and continue to collaborate with them during collective bargaining.

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SDEA Claim #1: Special Education Caseloads 

SDEA Claim: Historically, the District has been unable to address Special Education vacancies which causes many Special Education teachers to be above the agreed upon student to teacher caseload ratio. Special Education teachers who were over caseload in the 23-24 and 24-25 school year still have not been compensated for those overages.

Action SD Unified is/or has Taken: The District has currently filled 97% of special education teacher positions using the contractual 20 to 1 caseload ratio which is 8 students below the State maximum. The district has offered a monthly stipend to address caseload overages for the past two school years, 23-24 and 24-25, has offered to cover the cost of general education teachers to earn their Special Education credential, and has proposed a solution to be able to fill the remaining mild/moderate teacher vacancies with a current pool of applicants. 

SDEA Claim #2: Eliminating Special Education Teacher Position

Actual Situation Happening at Schools: The positions that were reduced were assigned to a Central Office department supporting non-public schools, not San Diego Unified schools.

Action SD Unified is/or has Taken: Support for non-public schools is still being provided by the Central Office, however, the District continues to offer solutions to SDEA for the 6 impacted Central Office positions that were reduced. 

SDEA Claim #3: Not Counting ESN students in elementary teacher staffing allocation 

Actual Situation: Students who are assigned to a separate-setting classroom, like Extensive Support Needs (ESN), and spend the majority of their day in that separate setting are counted towards the staffing needed for the separate setting classroom to ensure there are enough educators, both teachers and paraeducators, to support when students are in the separate-setting classroom AND when they push into the general education setting for part of their day. 

Action SD Unified is/or has Taken: Ensuring students who are assigned to a separate-setting classroom, like Extensive Support Needs, are placed on that teacher’s classroom roster so the appropriate amount of staffing is assigned. 

Info to Support SD Unified Position: Students are not placed on the general education teacher’s roster since the amount of time for the push-in support varies student-by-student. Some students may push-in for small windows of time and/or for an intended purpose (i.e. subject-area specific instruction, recess, etc.) and typically have the support of a paraeducator or the ESN teacher during that time. Students who spend the majority of their day in a general education setting should be reassessed to determine if they need the level of support for an ESN student OR if they are able to be successful in a general education setting with supplemental mild/moderate support. This determination can be made by the IEP team