The Santa Barbara Unified Board of Trustees will convene on February 10 to learn about junior high school master schedule options. At the beginning of January, the Board of Trustees requested a public discussion on the impact of adding a course period to address diverse student needs.
The Board aims to weigh the benefits and impacts against fiscal realities and the varying student learning needs at each campus. The District is currently working to address a substantial budget deficit and is considering reductions, even before accounting for potential cost increases from ongoing labor negotiations.
Labor Negotiations & Legal Context
The Santa Barbara Teachers Association (SBTA) recently proposed during contract negotiations changes to both junior high student schedules and high school student course loads.
California collective bargaining law guarantees employees the right to bargain over mandatory subjects, meaning matters that directly define the employment relationship, including wages, hours, and working conditions.
Because these two items directly affect students’ school day and instructional minutes, rather than teacher working conditions, they are nonmandatory subjects of bargaining and do not belong in a labor contract. Nevertheless, the District’s stance on collaboration remains consistent: the District seeks to collaborate with all stakeholders, including teachers, on student-centered solutions.
The District does not include decisions about student schedules, course structure, and instructional minutes in a binding labor contract for three main reasons:
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Preserving Collaboration: The District can collaborate through public action without permanently binding future governance to a labor contract.
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Flexibility: Converting student policy into binding labor contract language restricts the District’s ability to adapt to future fiscal and enrollment shifts and changing student needs.
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Public Accountability: Major policy and resource decisions should be made by the elected Board in public view, not at the negotiation table behind closed doors. The District’s Board has a responsibility to implement the best policies to improve student outcomes and balance budgets, which it cannot do if it relinquishes control over these decisions.
The District remains fully committed to its legal obligation to negotiate the impacts of any decisions that affect teacher working conditions. If the Board approves a schedule change, any effects on working conditions will be negotiated with SBTA.
Public Participation
The aim of the February 10th Board discussion is to transparently evaluate these impacts and hear from all stakeholders. The public is invited to provide feedback by emailing dist_board@sbunified.org or offering public comment at the meeting.
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Why do they need more time to learn about options? It’s not like these are new issues. They must have some idea what the cost and implications would be. These have been issues at least since the last round of contract negotiations two years ago. At that time, the messaging from the district was that changing the junior highs to a 7 period schedule would need to be negotiated with SBTA. Now they are saying the opposite, but have not explained what changed.
Even within this one press release, they say “these two items directly affect students’ school day and instructional minutes, rather than teacher working conditions,” and later “If the Board approves a schedule change, any effects on working conditions will be negotiated with SBTA.”
So…are the schedule changes going to affect teacher working conditions or not?
They are kicking the can down the road again. Meanwhile, junior high students won’t be able to take the electives they deserve, and high school juniors and seniors won’t have the option to take classes for a full school day. These are SERIOUS, EGREGIOUS problems! Our kids’ right to a public education is being infringed! Parents should be outraged that the district is doing this, and that they are doing such a poor job communicating about it. (I am an SBUSD teacher and this EdHat press release is legitimately the first messaging from the district I have seen about this.)
CitizensofSB Yup, they are worried about the recent article Edhat published from the teacher’s union. go guys, go.
The majority just wants to protect Maldonado and put lipstick on the pig. get everyone to email or go to the meeting.
Keep the preasure you guys are doing a great job. Know that the Coalition for Neighborhood Schools stands behind you.
https://www.coalitionforneighborhoodschools.com/
I wonder exactly what the Board is looking at when they say adding a period “to address diverse students needs”. Pretty vague statement.
I think AI wrote this. Maybe I don’t understand state law very well, but I’m confused about how “instructional minutes” don’t qualify as teacher working conditions. Is the district’s stance that it could add an hour to each end of each school day and teachers couldn’t bargain around that? That seems abusive.
805er, this response is politically driven in response to the recent article . The district does not want to look bad.
This should build some heat under Maldonado.
Good for the Teachers’ Union. This opens it up for the public to attend the meeting in person, by zoom or by email response.
It’s a good question, and the article leaves out the fact that instructional minutes per day are state mandated and the district cannot change that number of minutes. They can only decide on how those minutes are divided up during the day/week. “Teacher working conditions” is a very broad category of things in the workplace but if the total number of instructional minutes is not changing, then distributing them differently isn’t necessarily affecting working conditions. Adding even a minute, let alone an hour to the school day, without compensating it in some way, would not be a legal option for the district.
SBUnified has had two years to create a solution that provides access to electives for all our Junior High students. There is no effective and equitable solution that does not affect the working conditions of the teachers. The teachers came together to find a solution that most junior high teachers are willing to do, but because the union set a standard that would protect what’s important to teachers (minimum class length, not teaching more students or more classes) the District is hiding behind the fact that this is non-mandatory. Every time the District mentions their fiscal responsibility remember that they are expecting to bring in $6 million more in income from property taxes next year, the teachers asked for this change in bell schedule before asking for a raise, and that if the income from the Federal Government continues to be unreliable and they actually spend enough of their substantial reserves to put the district at risk of bankruptcy, they can force the teacher’s union back to the bargaining table to renegotiate salary, class size, etc. SBUnified is not at any risk of going bankrupt over this issue, they just don’t want to lose control over bell schedules.