SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A teachers strike entered its third day Friday in Sacramento Friday.
As unions representing 2,800 teachers and 1,800 school employees hit the picket lines Wednesday, the Sacramento City Unified School District [SCUSD] canceled classes at its 76 schools, affecting 43,000 students.
While both the unions and SCUSD continue to be at odds over issues surrounding staffing, better pay, training and health benefits, they both agreed on one thing Thursday: neither side met with the other to pick up negotiations on Thursday.
On Friday afternoon, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond held a meeting with all sides to discuss ending the strike.
In response to Thurmond's announcement, SCUSD Superintendent Jorge Aguilar released a statement to students and families in the district.
In the statement, SCUSD asked the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) to provide a counterproposal to the district's previous proposal.
"Our community is also wanting to understand what it will take to end this strike," Aguilar wrote in a statement. "With a counterproposal, the district’s negotiators are prepared to meet around the clock with SCTA so that we can bring our students on Monday."
In his statement, Aguilar stressed the importance of bringing students back to school as quickly as possible.
"Our children need to be in school, we want to be in school with them, but today we’re out here because our children need us,” Memphis Clark, a health aid in the district, said.
Aguilar echoed his comments from earlier Friday in a video posted to the district's YouTube page.
"Today, Superintendent Aguilar and the school board did not show up to a meeting called by California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond--after they put out a press release full of blatant lies last night in a cynical effort to turn the community against the teachers and staff who take care of our students every day. We have asked them multiple times since March 18 to come to the table, and have been met with silence,” said SEIU 1021 SCUSD Chapter President Karla Faucett in a press release sent to ABC10.
"The resolution has been there all along since the mediator gave his recommendations, since that moment this could've been resolved," said David Fisher, president of the SCTA.
Representatives for the teachers union say they're ready to spend all weekend negotiating with the district to have a deal in place by Monday.
Elsewhere in Northern California, teachers in the Mount Diablo district in the San Francisco Bay Area reached a tentative agreement on Saturday. In Sonoma County's Cotati-Rohnert Park district, teachers returned to work last Thursday after a six-day strike. Spokespeople for the two largest national educators' unions said they knew of no other teacher strikes on the horizon.
Across the country, unions are seizing the opportunity posed by tight labor markets to recover some of the power they feel they lost in recent decades. And experts expect to see more labor strife as the country emerges from the pandemic. President Joe Biden's administration is considering changes that could make it easier for federal workers and contractors to unionize.
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No end in sight for Sacramento teacher strike