West Contra Costa Teachers Are Set to Strike. Across the Bay Area, More Could Follow

Teachers in the West Contra Costa Unified School District plan to strike beginning Thursday as long-simmering labor disputes come to a head in major districts across the Bay Area.

Union leaders say their educators need higher wages and better benefit coverage — and they aren’t alone. In San Francisco, the union representing public school teachers is holding a strike authorization vote on Wednesday, and in Berkeley, the union is entering mediation with the district after declaring an impasse.

Across California, meanwhile, school districts have struggled to balance their budgets as they face declining enrollment and shrinking state funding.

“This is an education justice issue,” said Francisco Ortiz, the president of United Teachers of Richmond, which represents 1,400 West Contra Costa teachers. “The district’s piecemeal solutions are not serving our students. We need to see action that stabilizes our district now, which means providing competitive wages and health care, smaller class sizes, and a commitment to our educators that supports their ability to stay.”

Educators at the district’s 50 campuses began negotiating a new two-year contract with school officials eight months ago. After the union declared an impasse in August, two negotiations mediated by a third party failed to yield an agreement.

As part of that process, a neutral fact-finding committee made its recommendations for a compromise between West Contra Costa Unified and the teachers’ union last week. The district’s offer, however, proposed a lower wage hike than the report recommended, prompting United Teachers of Richmond to call the indefinite strike, Ortiz said.

He said the offer was “not what’s going to help keep our educators here.”

“Our educators have been sounding the alarm for years about the staffing crisis and instability that our students face,” he told KQED. “Our students deserve educators who can feel safe and secure working here and can stay here. They deserve teachers whose work and commitment with our students is respected and reciprocated by the district. That’s the crux here.”

Teachers in districts throughout the Bay Area have echoed his sentiment as they escalate their own threats to strike in the coming months without better contracts. United Educators of San Francisco members will take the first of two votes necessary to authorize a strike on Wednesday afternoon after their first third-party mediation process failed. The Berkeley Federation of Teachers and Berkeley Unified School District declared an impasse on Nov. 20, moving them into mediation.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Danielle Mahones, the director of leadership development programs at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “Educators and parents and students have been feeling that schools … across California have been underfunded, that classrooms are too crowded, that the teacher pay is not keeping up with the cost of living in many cities. For some time, educators have diligently tried to get these issues resolved at the district level, but they’re seeing that there’s common themes.”

‘They can’t do it anymore’

Across the districts, wages and health benefits have been the biggest sticking points for unions negotiating contracts for 2025 to 2027.

Compared with similarly educated workers in the state, teachers’ compensation has always been low, Mahones said, but it’s become less tenable in recent years — both because the cost of living has risen and because workers are growing more fatigued.

“A lot of them are sort of surviving paycheck to paycheck and yet still buying food for their own students who are in need, buying school supplies for their classrooms,” she told KQED. “I think it’s just reached a point where folks feel like they can’t do it anymore. And they’re really concerned seeing a lot of their colleagues leave the profession.”

United Teachers of Richmond asked the district for a 5% raise in each of the next two years when it began negotiations in February.

“Currently, we’re at the bottom of both pay and health care contributions in the entire county of Contra Costa,” Ortiz said, adding that union members did not receive any pay increase last year. “That’s why we’ve lost over 1,500 educators in the last five years. We’ve lost more teachers than we represent in the last five years.”

The fact-finding team’s recommendation on Friday was equivalent to a 6% raise over the next two-year contract period: a 2.5% hike retroactive to July, when their former contract expired, plus additional raises of 0.5% in 2026 and 3% in 2027.

The district’s offer, which led to the strike declaration, was half of that, according to Ortiz: a 2% increase retroactive to July and 1% more in January, with no raise in 2027. It did increase the district’s contribution to health care benefits over the next two years, according to Superintendent Cheryl Cotton.

“We made this offer even though our district is already spending millions more each year than we receive in revenue,” Cotton wrote in an email to families on Monday. The district has had to slash tens of millions of dollars from its budget over the last two years, and more cuts will be needed to stave off an ongoing deficit.

But Ortiz argued that the district can afford the union’s ask.

“We have identified ways in which the district can afford our proposals and stabilize our school district. And their current offer will not do that,” he said.

The San Francisco Unified School District has offered teachers a 2% wage hike in exchange for cutting other contractual obligations, including a sabbatical program for veteran educators and additional prep periods for advanced placement teachers.

Two years ago, the district gave teachers historic $9,000 raises. Now it’s facing a major budget crisis, spurring a commitment to cutting more than $150 million in ongoing costs over two years.

The Berkeley Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, asked for consecutive 5% raises for two years and has gotten no wage increase offer from BUSD after 17 bargaining sessions, according to union President Matt Meyer.

As wages fall behind the cost of living, Mahones said, more of educators’ paychecks are also going to health care coverage because districts are passing the cost of higher premiums along to teachers.

United Educators of San Francisco President Cassondra Curiel told KQED last week that without a new agreement, teachers with two children would have to put about $1500 of each paycheck toward health care come January.

Meyer said Berkeley Unified covers about 55% of employees’ benefit costs, but he added that in the last five years, the percentage of their paychecks that has gone to health coverage has increased significantly.

“Our disposable income has gone down quite a bit just because of what the employee has to pay for medical benefits,” he told KQED. Berkeley’s union has asked the district to cover 100% of health care costs, but it has not gotten an offer from the district.

In a statement on Monday, Berkeley’s Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel said the district was “committed to good-faith discussions that honor their contributions while also ensuring the long-term financial health of our district.” It also faces a budget deficit of $7.6 million for this school year.

Unions build statewide unity

As more local unions feel emboldened to push toward strikes, Mahones said increased coordination and common ground are likely playing a large part. She said they’ve found that the problems they’re facing aren’t isolated and are in part a result of state funding shortfalls.

“It is one thing if one single district in our state goes out on strike. It is something else when we were just seeing district after district reach impasse,” she said.

Currently, California ranks 16th in the country in terms of per-pupil education funding, but that drops to 31st when accounting for the cost of living.

“I think it’s a shame that we’re all stuck negotiating with our local districts for what the state gives,” Meyer said. “But we do know that our district can spend its money more wisely and can prioritize and make an investment in educators.”

In the spring, 32 unions, including West Contra Costa, San Francisco and Berkeley, joined a coordinated campaign by the California Teachers Association, dubbed “We Can’t Wait,” with the goals of increasing districts’ spending on school sites and ultimately increasing state funding.

Mahones said that one of their hopes is that coordinated union pressure could encourage district leaders to push legislators to allocate more money for public education in the state’s budget.

“I think that educators are also looking to the state of California, as the fifth-biggest economy in the world, to say, ‘We need to be doing better for our students,’” Mahones told KQED. “‘What would it look like for California to actually make a commitment to all students in our state being able to receive a high-quality education with fair teacher-to-student ratios … counselors and school nurses and access to mental health?”

California Teachers Association President David Goldberg said that California’s education system has weathered decades of disinvestment since Proposition 13 passed, restricting the amount of state funding schools get from property taxes. Now, they rely much more heavily on income tax, resulting in major swings in school districts’ budgets based on economic fluctuations.

But he cautioned against writing off the current union tensions as just a result of state shortages. Unions across the Bay Area say their districts spend too much money on large administrative arms, contracting outside special education services and teachers, and building up high reserve funds.

“Because state funding is so scarce, they have to be that much better. There’s no room for error,” he said. “Districts have to get it right.”

KQED’s Sara Hossaini contributed to this report.