Sac City Teachers Request “Budget Solutions Committee” Established by State Superintendent Tony Thurmond

(Sacramento, May 10, 2019) — Earlier today, the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) sent a letter which you can view here to State Superintendent Tony Thurmond requesting that he establish a Sac City “Budget Solutions Committee,” chaired by the CEO of the California Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT).

The intent of the committee would be to help avoid the SCTA strike scheduled for May 22, “and perhaps more importantly an impending state takeover of the district.”

In its letter, SCTA suggests that the committee include representatives from the District, and the Sacramento County Office of Education and SCTA. The Association further suggests the inclusion of participants from the greater Sacramento business community (a representative from the Greater Sacramento Economic Council and the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce) as well as Labor (Yvonne Walker, the president of Service Employees International Union Local 1000 and Fabrizio Sasso, the Executive Director of the Sacramento Central Labor Council) as well as Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna who had previously offered his support to helping the parties work through their differences.

“We are confident that in this setting,” the letter states, “we can find a viable solution to the Sac City budget crisis that allows for the full implementation of our current collective bargaining agreement, provided that consideration of all reasonable solutions is part of the discussion. Nevertheless, we have stated publicly, and want to reiterate, that if all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted, then SCTA would consider reopening our contract to avoid state takeover.”

“We have been saying all along that we believe that we have a lot of ideas that can avoid state takeover, while honoring our contract,” said David Fisher, the president of SCTA, and the parent of two students in the district. “With think that with Superintendent Thurmond’s leadership we have a much better opportunity to address these issues.”

“I welcome the opportunity to work with a broad spectrum of interests all with the same goal of achieving labor peace, a balanced budget, and most importantly avoiding state takeover,” said Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna.

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With 40,000 students, the Sacramento City Unified School District is the 13th largest school district in California. The Sacramento City Teachers Association is an affiliate of the California Teachers Association and the National Education Association.

About the Sacramento City Teachers Association
Since 1921, the Sacramento City Teachers Association has represented teachers, school nurses, psychologists, language speech and hearing specialists, social workers, librarians and other certificated professionals who work for the Sacramento City Unified School District. SCTA represents 2800 professional educators.