SCUSD’s Coronavirus Profiteering, as Superintendent Pay Soars:

SCUSD is refusing to pay day-to-day substitute teachers, openly defying a March 13 Executive Order from Governor Gavin Newsom (N-26-20). Gov. Newsom’s order states that school districts will continue to receive state funding provided they “continue to pay employees.”

“This is a cruel, callous policy that cheats our substitute teachers during this unprecedented crisis,” said David Fisher, the president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA). “By profiteering during a deadly public health crisis, SCUSD administrators are failing students, teachers and parents and causing a national embarrassment for our entire district.” 

“This is the same administration that treated classified employees like cannon fodder by forcing hundreds of non-essential staff to report to work at the SCUSD central office four days after Governor Newsom’s Executive Order closing schools,” said Karla Faucett, chapter president of SEIU Local 1021, representing 1,500 service employees at SCUUSD. “It’s outrageous that this disregard for SCUSD employees, in this case substitute teachers, is allowed to continue.”

Other California school districts, according to Fisher, are complying with the governor’s order and providing pay for day-to-day substitutes, including Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego and Stockton. 

Before the school closure due to Coronavirus on March 16, SCUSD employed some 200 substitutes per day at $221.99 for each day they worked, at an estimated cost of $44,000 per day. Day-to-day substitutes have not received any pay since schools closed. Instead, theSCUSD administration is diverting more than$800,000 per month into its coffers, rather than using the funds, as intended, to support school employees during this ongoing public health crisis. 

“It unconscionable that a school district that pays its superintendent more than $414,000 each year in total compensation is grabbing money that substitutes need to survive,” said Fisher. “Substitutes work in some of the most difficult conditions that educators face —conditions now exacerbated by potential exposure to coronavirus — and without health insurance benefits.”

Sacramento City Unified School District superintendent Jorge Aguilar receives $414,848 in total compensation, an increase of $34,156 since 2017-18. A substitute teacher in Sac City would have to work 155 out of 180 instructional days just to make the equivalent of Mr. Aguilar’s increase.  It would take more than ten years – over 1,800 school days – for a substitute to earn Aguilar’s entire yearly pay package.

“Jorge Aguilar can afford to miss a few paychecks,” said Fisher. “Day-to-day substitutes in Sacramento can’t.”