Santa Barbara Teachers Association (SBTA), representing educators from Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD) received a supermajority of responses from educators (81% of SBTA) to their annual survey, revealing that most educators work far beyond their paid workday to meet students’ needs and identifying several district decisions not in students’ best interests. SBTA proposes a suite of changes to improve student experience, learning conditions, teacher retention, and administrative systems among other items.
WORKLOAD: END STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES
Combo classes at the elementary level, with two grades being taught by one teacher, and co-seating more than one course in one period at the high school level are examples of financially driven decisions that make learning more difficult for students. SBTA would like to see an end to those practices.
WORKLOAD: WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Santa Barbara educators care deeply about setting up all students for success through shifts in the daily schedule. SBTA would like a year-long schedule offered at at least one of the high schools so that parents and students have a choice of year-long learning with shorter gaps between instruction. Some students would benefit from year-long instruction and a shorter gap between one level of instruction and the next. For example, if a student finishes math 1 in the fall and doesn’t have math 2 until the spring of the following school year, the learning loss can be significant. Other students benefit from having shorter, condensed learning opportunities that allow for more diversity of courses and offerings. Both strategies are beneficial, and SBTA would like to see the district support more than one schedule (4×4 block, 8 period year-long, and 7 period year-long), so that students and their families have real choices.
The 4×4 block model can be very successful if financially supported so that students are able to take a full schedule of courses all four years, resulting in increased electives offerings, a range of intervention classes, in-person re-takes with a teacher of that subject, and time for yearly athletics built into the school day. When under-resourced, the 4×4 model is a cheaper way for the district to rely on students not taking a full schedule to reduce costs, offering online credit recovery rather than retaking a course, and to shift away from student-driven scheduling towards financially-driven staffing decisions and limited course offerings. SBTA would like to see a reduction in dismissal periods, offering all students in-person re-takes, and staffing levels that value students being in school all day.
“The district should be investing in classrooms. Rather than forcing students into online credit recovery classes, students should be allowed to retake classes with a teacher in a dynamic and engaging learning environment. The district should be investing in enough staffing for students to take the courses they need, elect to take courses they want, and retake courses they need additional help in.” Kat Ross, Vice President of SBTA
TECHNOLOGY: DECREASE RELIANCE ON DIGITAL-ONLY CURRICULUM
Santa Barbara educators have seen the positive results of the off-and-away all day initiatives at the elementary and junior high schools; phone distraction has significantly decreased across all of those sites. At the same time, iPad distractions have taken the place of some of that screen-time distraction and high school students are still contending with device distraction. Secondary educators especially would like to have more tech-free curriculum options for their students.
Santa Barbara educators are doing amazing work offering high quality, robust educators to the students of Santa Barbara. Educators offer structural improvements to systems to make meaningful systematic positive changes across the district to improve the working conditions of educators and the learning conditions of students from our youngest infant students to our graduating seniors.
For more data, information, and quotes, please refer to the 25/26 State of Santa Barbara Educators Abridged Report.
About Santa Barbara Teachers Association
Santa Barbara Teachers Association is the union that represents over 700 of Santa Barbara Unified’s educators. It is a student-centered organization that works to improve the schools in Santa Barbara Unified. They believe that excellent and equitable education will build a better future for all of our students.
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Liking what I’m hearing here from the teachers, especially regarding the absurd reliance on iPads. iPads are a cheap and ineffective replacement for real teaching. So many problems with this, especially at the grammar school and junior high schools. It’ll be surprising if Hilda takes the teachers’ comments seriously though. She’s been on her own agenda since day 1.
For once, I agree with everything you say here. Ipads have their place, but you can’t replace real books, doing math homework by hand, etc.
When I came to this country from Germany at the age of 4-1/2, I didn’t speak word of English and neither could my mother, father or sister. My parents went to night school to learn English and when I entered kindergarten at age 6, I was immersed in English
There are several problems in our education system and the first one is that parents are not helping their children and forcing them to learn. Our teachers have stopped teaching in favor of outside gimmicks, mostly electronic. Our classrooms are ovens in the summer. Many of our teachers are not qualified to teach the subjects that they teach and too many don’t know how to teach! There is not enough discipline in too many schools. Teachers are afraid of lawsuits and getting fired. Our local schoolboard is nothing more than a platform for members to run for higher office. They quit to run for another office in the middle of their elected term. As our country continues its slide, China is eating our Chop Suey!
Mein Kampf.
Well, all the constant MAGA cuts to education and putting a WWE fraud in charge of the nation’s education will definitely help!
I agree. Our educational system in CA is in a very sad state for a lot of the reasons you describe.