State Finds Aguilar and SCUSD Broke the Law–for the 17th time

On July 23, 2021, the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) issued a complaint against Superintendent Jorge Aguilar and the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) for refusing to negotiate with teachers prior to make changes in the SCUSD health and safety protocols related to COVID in May. Since making the unlawful changes, there have been over 33 positive COVID cases during summer school, where student participation levels are 16 times lower than during the regular school year, and nearly 400 students or one out every four students, have had to quarantine.

The latest initial finding from PERB is the seventeenth complaint issued against SCUSD since Jorge Aguilar became superintendent on July 1, 2017. The serial violations of California labor law ranks SCUSD number one among 1037 school district in the state in breaking the law over the last four years.

Aguilar’s reckless disregard for the law is among the reasons both certificated staff represented by SCTA and classified staff represented by SEIU Local 1021 overwhelmingly voted (by over 96%) NO CONFIDENCE in Aguilar’s leadership. The justification for the overwhelming vote of NO CONFIDENCE can be found here.

Additionally, the law breaking is consistentent with the findings of state auditor who found that the SCUSD Board of Education “failed to uphold its fiduciary duty” with regarding to budgeting and reactions from the CEO of the State of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) which noted the Aguilar and SCUSD had “no creditability.”

The District has spent millions in tax payer dollars to Lozano Smith, its outside law firm, in defending its unlawful actions, as well as having to pay SCTA’s attorney fees to compensate for Aguilar’s illegal activities.