Members of a new CFT task force have been working on coming up with actions, both legislation and bargaining, to address the problem of understaffing in schools.
Prior to the formation of the task force, EC/TK-12 Council President Steve McDougall says he and CFT President Jeff Freitas discussed the importance of addressing the issue of understaffing.
“I took over this role in May of 2022,” McDougall said. “Jeff kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I need you to troubleshoot short and long-term solutions to the educators’ staffing crisis.”’
Early on, it was clear that this work should include input from classified members, as they, in some cases, have more pronounced understaffing concerns than certificated members. So, CCE President Carl Williams was brought onboard to provide a classified member’s lens, and a package of bills was brought to the forefront of CFT’s legislative agenda.
Some of the bills pushed forward include capturing accurate data about class sizes (SB 872) so advocates can have informed discussions with legislators, right of first refusal for classified professionals (AB 2088), and, crucially, increasing salaries and wages for certificated and classified members (AB 938).
Williams and McDougall, the co-leaders of the task force, Educators for Quality Schools (EQS), felt it was critically important to involve classified workers in conversations about the staffing crisis, so the EQS includes leaders from the Hawthorne Federation of Classified Employees and the Gilroy Federation of Paraeducators, along with leaders from ABC Federation, El Rancho, Galt, Jefferson AFT, Lompoc, Pajaro Valley, Petaluma, and Salinas Valley, from EC/TK-12 Council.
Williams says it means a lot to him that CFT is inclusive:
“At CFT, classified voices are heard, and they always consider us,” he said. “We have a seat at the table and our needs, our concerns, our wants, and our hopes are incorporated into the vision of the EQS.”
Those needs, concerns, desires, and hopes include making classified jobs more inviting by offering health care along with higher salaries, Williams says.
Williams would also like to see the shortage of substitutes addressed. Classified workers are often the ones who fill in when there isn’t a sub, he says.
“Our work is sometimes doubled, tripled, or quadrupled,”
Williams says. “With the workforce shortage, it really wears down the body. We also need more full-time jobs. Classified workers sometimes work three or four hours a day, and you can’t feed a family, let alone enjoy life on three or four hours a day.”
Nelly Vaquera, President of the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers, says she wants to talk about meeting educators’ needs post COVID in the task force.
“How do we begin to strategize?” she asked. “What are the things that are needed that could be in policy to bring back respect to our profession and the value of educators?”
Like Williams, Vaquera is concerned about the sustainability of the workload. She thinks conversations with legislators to explain public school workers’ experiences are important and hopes the members of the task force can come up with bills to create needed revenue. What CFT members want is pretty simple, she says. It’s the ability to live a middle-class life doing the jobs they chose and went to school for and not have to need second or third jobs to be able to pay rent.
The EQS’s vision statement serves as a north star for what members are working towards, McDougall says. It is as follows:
“California students have fully staffed schools with highly paid and trained education workers,” he said. “That we bring back and instill a pride and trust in our profession, both classified and certificated, and that all education workers have high quality, affordable, and accessible healthcare benefits.”