A group of Bay Area teacher unions rally outside Oakland City Hall on Feb. 4, 2025, demanding fully staffed schools, better wages, more resources, smaller class sizes, and safety improvements.
Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
A California Teachers Association campaign is uniting teachers in 32 school districts to leverage their administrations for higher pay and benefits, smaller class sizes, and mental health support and other resources for students.
The school districts, from San Diego to Sacramento, employ 77,000 teachers and serve 1 million students.
The “We Can’t Wait” campaign, launched during a webinar Tuesday, will offer a united platform that CTA President David Goldberg said will build broader pressure statewide.
“That’s never happened before across districts,” Goldberg said during the webinar. “They (the chapters) believe that can force change now, and together we’re demanding that every school district prioritize fully staffed schools, competitive wages and benefits to recruit and retain quality educators, and safe and stable schools where every child can learn and thrive.”
The CTA represents 310,000 of the state’s educators, including teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, librarians, education support professionals and some higher education faculty and staff.
The collaboration includes some of the state’s largest school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Diego Unified, San Francisco Unified, Oakland Unified and Sacramento Unified.
Participating union chapters from 10 of the largest districts have contracts expiring on June 30, according to California Teachers Association leaders. The other districts have contracts expiring near that time. While union chapters aren’t permitted to bargain across school districts, the multiyear campaign allows them to support one another, Goldberg said.
In Sacramento County, for example, three of the larger school districts are part of the coalition. That means all three districts would be negotiating contracts with their unions at about the same time, and — if all three fail to come to an agreement — could ultimately end up at an impasse or even with strikes, all at the same time.
Union locals held rallies across the state to celebrate the campaign. At a rally of Bay Area educators in Oakland on Tuesday afternoon, the crowd of more than 100 chanted “We Can’t Wait” in the pouring rain. Students, teachers and politicians spoke about the need to keep schools open, increase teacher pay and add resources for students.
“We see the impact that understaffing has on our teachers and on our classmates when we don’t have enough teachers to cover classes to the point classes are cut,” Skyline High School student Ra’Maur Cash said. “It makes me so sad because so many of our students at our schools love the class that they go to, and when we don’t have enough teachers to teach those classes, classes were cut.”
U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, who represents Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda and surrounding cities, didn’t attend the rally, but an aide read her statement, which said she stands in solidarity with rallying Bay Area educators.
“Now is the time to act,” Simon wrote. “We must demand fully funded, well-staffed schools where teachers thrive and students succeed. The future of our children depends on it. Together, we will secure a brighter, more equitable future for every child in America.”
California teacher pay isn’t keeping up with inflation or the cost of housing, CTA leaders said in the webinar, citing “California Teacher Pay: Decades of Falling Behind,” research by Sylvia Allegretto from the Center for Economic and Policy research based in Washington, D.C.
The pay gap between teachers and other professionals with similar educations has widened for four decades, according to the research.
“That really influences the teacher shortages, the retaining of current teachers, the recruitment of future teachers into the profession,” Allegretto said at the webinar. “And here in California … the high cost of living is a serious problem. The complexity of these challenges calls for a massive coordinated effort.”
California teachers have the highest average pay in the nation, compared with teachers in other states, according to National Education Association (NEA) data that does not factor in the cost of living.
In 2024, the average starting salary for a California teacher was $55,283 and the average salary was $95,160, according to the NEA.
The high cost of living in California, especially the cost of housing and health care, still keeps many teachers from meeting their most basic needs, Goldberg said when asked about the NEA data.
“We are facing a crisis in our public schools,” Goldberg said. “There are not enough educators on our school campuses. California ranks in the bottom five of states for class-size ratio. We rank 48th in the nation for access to school counselors. The resources we do have are constantly under attack.”
Local union chapter leaders plan to approach school district administrators in the coming weeks to begin bargaining, according to CTA leaders.
By aligning their contracts, the unions are raising awareness in the major metro areas of the need to invest in schools, said Ken Jacobs, senior policy adviser at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
“CTA is correct to say this is unprecedented for teachers’ unions,” Jacobs told EdSource. “We have seen success in private sector unions aligning contracts across regions. The best recent example is UNITE HERE locals successfully carrying out coordinated hotel strikes around the country.”
But how will districts afford raises and other increased costs when some are inching closer to the fiscal cliff and considering buyouts, layoffs or school closures?
“It is really a matter of priorities,” said Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, president of the Oakland Education Association.
Oakland Unified’s school board is considering merging schools and making other cuts to close budget deficits, but Taiz-Rancifer said the district has the resources to keep schools open and to put teachers and other resources in the classroom.
Parent and executive director of Parent Voices Oakland, Clarissa Doutherd, who was at the rally in Oakland Tuesday afternoon, agrees.
“When underfunding leads to the threats of budget cuts and closures … that jeopardizes our school communities,” Doutherd said. “When we unite across the Bay Area and across California to demand that districts prioritize spending that directly impacts our children and our schools, so that our kids have stability, so that our kids have fully staffed schools that aren’t in threat of closure every single other year.”
