By Jon Chown
Workload, class size, the school calendar, teachers’ rights, wages and more will all be on the table for negotiations between the Pajaro Valley Unified School District and its teachers union. Judging by comments from union leaders at the PVUSD Oct. 1 board meeting, it could be a fight.
PVUSD and the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers released a joint sunshine proposal on Oct. 1 for the two sides’ upcoming contract negotiations. It was the same night the board extended the contract for Superintendent Heather Contreras to 2029. Contreras’ base salary for 2025-26 was raised to $268,536, with a 2% annual increase in addition to cost-of-living adjustments. Radhika Kirkman, vice president of negotiations for PVFT, told the board during public comment that teachers were taking note.
“While we understand the need to compensate administration, there is something deeply wrong when that same budget failed to provide an onsary increase for your teachers, the very people working with your students every day, and the same year you voted for unnecessary layoffs,” she warned.
Kirkman also had issues with recent budgets, pointing out that reality always seemed to be far better than the dim forecasts of deficit spending and that “the sky is falling.”
“Over the past five years the revenue in the PVUSD budget has been underestimated by an average $42 million,” she said. “You cannot continue to claim this narrative of fiscal responsibility while underinvesting in the people that make these schools function.”
Perhaps it was in response to this type of criticism that the PVUSD approved a new literacy training program that does invest in the teachers. During the same meeting, the Board of Trustees, in a rare unanimous vote, approved a two-year teacher training program to improve literacy instruction. Titled Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, the LETERS program is supposed to help teachers identify individual skills a student needs to improve reading.
Superintendent Heather Contreras said the training teaches teachers the science of reading. “So what they’re learning is how the human brain learns to read and how the human brain, at any age, cracks the code of reading,” she said.
Teachers will basically receive a monthly stipend of $1,500, if they stay current in the training, for up to 10 months for two years. The program will collect data to track how students perform under teachers who took the training and teachers who did not.
Board President Olivia Flores said the program was a huge win for the students. “I just can’t wait for our numbers to go up and up,” she said.
According to the union, the district had asked the teachers to take the training while substitute teachers filled in, but teachers complained that they’d be left working extra hours creating class assignments and grading papers from home. Watsonville High School English teacher Bobby Pelz told the board that teachers refused to accept that, didn’t stay silent, supported one another and the district backed down. Now, teachers will be paid for their extra work.
“To every teacher listening, if you are overwhelmed by workload, feel your classroom conditions are impossible, if you are tired of being disrespected, know this: You don’t have to accept it,” he said.
“This is a win for our teachers,” said Kirkman, who went on to say that it was refreshing to see teachers paid for the extra work that they do, and that what they do every day should be equally valued.
The annual budget, and the fact the district is spending less than projected, was addressed later in the meeting. While $42 million may sound like a massive reserve, it only represents about 6 weeks of operating expenses for the PVUSD. A dramatic decline in enrollment or a prolonged government shutdown could quickly wipe that reserve out, pointed out Trustee Misty Navarro.
Both of those scenarios could happen at the same time. In the past 15 years, enrollment at PVUSD schools has fallen by 18%, down to 15,027 students, and is projected to decline even further to just 13,540. However, the surplus is expected to dramatically shrink.
“We have three more years, at least, with this federal government, so I think we need to be mindful going forward,” Navarro said.