Union's Advice to District: Don't Play Budget Game - voiceofsandiego.org: Education

Union's Advice to District: Don't Play Budget Game - voiceofsandiego.org: Education:

Union's Advice to District: Don't Play Budget Game

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  File Photo by Sam Hodgson

  Bill Freeman

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From the Reporter

Changing a Broken System

The teachers union says the school district should stand up against a broken budget system that requires it to issue hundreds of layoffs every year before it knows what the state’s budget will look like.

The Union’s Advice

As the second-biggest school district in California, San Diego Unified should use its clout and refuse to play the layoff game, and it should work with state lawmakers to reform the budget process, union officials say.

The Stumbling Blocks

But if the district refused to play the budget game, it wouldn’t be able to borrow any money and teachers wouldn’t get paid, district officials say. And changing the budget system would require the unions themselves to agree to change a layoff deadline they’ve so far fought to protect.

Posted: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 7:26 pm |Updated: 7:24 am, Thu Feb 9, 2012.

• By Will Carless

The bulk of a teachers union's press conference on Wednesday afternoon was devoted to pouring scorn on San Diego Unified School District's budget numbers.

Several union officials took turns at the podium to discredit the district's projections and lambaste the school board for insisting on issuing layoff notices when nobody yet knows how California's state budget will look in the summer.

That's nothing new for the union. It's been taking this hardline, confrontational approach towards the district for years. But at the very end of the press conference and in an interview afterwards, the union offered something of a new approach.

San Diego Education Association President Bill Freeman said the union understands that the district has to work within a frustrating system that requires it to put out a worst-case-scenario for its budget every year. But, he said, it doesn't have to be like that.

"Now is the time for us to come together and to demand that this broken budgetary system be corrected," Freeman said