More than 70 percent of Santa Maria Joint Union High School District’s classified employees make below the average living wage of $25 an hour in Santa Barbara County, district crisis intervention consultant Tami Contreras said.
“The issue at the present moment is wanting to be able to negotiate for our members—who are 460 classified employees in our district—a salary that can keep up with inflation as well as to be able to have a living wage to be able to afford to continue to be living in the community we serve,” she said.
Contreras has worked at Delta High School for 17 years and is the California School Employees Association Chapter 455 union president, representing classified employees like bus drivers, food service workers, IT department employees, and security services. Over the past 18 months, Contreras said she and her fellow members have been hit hard with rising costs due to inflation.
In response, the Santa Maria chapter of the association organized a rally for Oct. 11—after the Sun went to press—to advocate for higher wages, Contreras said.
“We are wanting for our people, to be able to afford the basic necessities without having to rely on second jobs or public assistance in order to survive in this community during the climate of rising inflation,” she said.
The union hopes the rally will allow the district and the union to come back to the table and renegotiate salaries. The effort is supported by other classified employee chapters, Santa Maria-Bonita School District, Orcutt Union School District, Guadalupe School District, and the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education, Contreras said.
In her time as a district employee, Contreras noted that there has never been an effort at this scale to get higher salaries, but it’s important to do for employee attraction and retention.
“Right now the district is having difficulty in filling all of the needed and necessary additions like special education aides, and those are essential positions in our district,” she said. “But, because our salaries are so low, the district is using and contracting out services because those contractors are paying more for instructional aides on an hourly basis.”
Classified employees also filled in a lot of shoes during the pandemic by delivering meals to students, giving IT help in school parking lots, and providing crucial behavioral health help.
“All of us are here to help educate our students and give them the best education possible. When we are not able to fill those positions, that hurts our students,” she said. “Part of that inability to fill those positions—as well as the turnover of classified positions—is reflective of the salaries they are offering.”
If the union does not agree to meet with the district to begin negotiations, Contreras said her group would approach the next board of education meeting (Nov. 8) “en masse” to publicly advocate for their needs.
“When we’re talking about educating our future, it’s imperative we get high quality personnel in our district that are skilled and dedicated and [can] live here in the community,” she said.
The Santa Maria Joint Union High School District didn’t get back to the Sun’s request for comment before deadline.
This article appears in Oct 13-20, 2022.