SRVUSD Teachers Get Class Size Caps, Lower Nurse Ratio

SAN RAMON VALLEY, CA — Teachers and managers in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District have reached a tentative contract agreement that will address their key teacher demands of smaller class sizes, especially for special-education students.

Ann Katzburg, president of the San Ramon Valley Education Association, said the agreement was reached during a marathon session that started at 9:30 a.m. Monday and continued until 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.

"We had 21 hours of negotiations, through the night, without a break," she said. Monday's session, Katzburg said, was supposed to be the beginning of the "fact finding" process during which an independent fact finder was called in to work with both sides to identify potential compromises or points of agreement. "We were close enough that we could broker a deal," Katzburg said Wednesday. "It was more mediation than fact finding."

Among the terms included in the tentative agreement are:

- A 2.5 percent ongoing base salary increase, retroactive to July 19, 2019, and an additional .5 percent increase as of Jan. 1, 2010;

- Lower caps on class sizes in elementary grades TK-5 classes and in certain special day classes;

- Lower staffing ratios for middle school counselors;

- A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the use of increased revenues contingent on the passage of the California Tax on Commercial and Industrial Properties for Education and Local Government Funding Initiative — also known as the Schools and Communities First Initiative. This initiative would require commercial and industrial properties, except those zoned as commercial agriculture, to be taxed based on their market value, rather than their purchase price. It has qualified for the November general election ballot.

The main points of contention, she said, had been class size and serving special education students. The class size issue, she said, primarily affects the students in transitional kindergarten through third grade. Class size has been an issue with special ed students as well, Katzburg said.

"Salary wasn't the thing; that had been settled relatively early in the process," Katzburg said.

More than 98 percent of district teachers voted in early February to authorize a strike, and district officials on Feb. 10 presented what they called their "best and final" three-year contract offer.

It isn't certain when the 1,688 members of the San Ramon Valley Education Association will vote to ratify the contract, but Katzburg said she thought it might be at a general membership meeting the latter half of next week.

That meeting, she said, could be done by teleconference, based on recommendations by Contra Costa County to limit meetings of more than 50 people amidst concerns about the coronavirus.

The district's Board of Education will also have to approve the agreement, likely at its regular April 14 meeting, said Christopher George, a school district spokesman. The San Ramon Valley Unified School District is one of the largest in the East Bay, with more than 36,000 students in 36 schools, most of them in San Ramon and Danville, and the unincorporated communities of Alamo and Blackhawk. Its headquarters is in Danville.

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