The San Dieguito Union High School District voted 3-2 on Thursday to approve a 12.5 percent pay raise for teachers. The meeting, held in SDA’s media center, was heavily attended by teachers of the San Dieguito Faculty Association from all over the district, who turned out in support of a new contract that would give them a pay raise after seven years of no change.

“I think we have some happy teachers having this go through….They are dedicated no matter what. They’ve gone for seven years with no raise and they’ve been phenomenal,” said Joyce Dalessandro, one of the board members who voted in favor of the raise.

“Teachers haven’t had a pay raise in a long time in this district and we’ve been really patient. It’s a great victory and teachers deserve it; it was a long time coming,” said Diegueno Middle School teacher Kari Smith, who attended the meeting.

The contract will give teachers a retroactive pay raise of seven percent for this year, and another 5.5 percent increase for the 2016-2017 school year.

Board members Maureen Muir and John Salazar voted against the raise.
Muir did not support the contract because, she said, it would increase class sizes. “[The contract] will now [have] class sizes going from 32 to 38 students,” she said. ”Class sizes going up is unacceptable to me.”
According to Associate Superintendent Jason Viloria, there is no change to the class sizes in the new contract, only a clarification in language.

Lack of what she said was a negotiating role on the part of the board members also upset Muir. “We were supposed to come back for negotiations. That’s how we do it here; that’s how we’ve been doing it here,” said Muir.
In response, Superintendent Rick Schmitt said, “Each board member has an opportunity for input and many asked questions along the way. Sometimes folks may not have agreed with all the answers but the history in this district is that the superintendent and the negotiating team have authority to negotiate a deal that is good for the community and good for the teachers.”

Both Muir and Salazar also felt that the public had a right to know the details of the contract much further in advance, arguing that releasing the proposed contract to the public less than 24 hours in advance did not give them an appropriate amount of time to fully comprehend it.
Board Member Beth Hergesheimer then explained that the highlights of the significant changes were available two weeks in advance and that it was an updated version of the contract that was made available the day before the meeting.

Two audience members were opposed to holding the meeting due to what they said were violations of the Ralph M Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law. Board member Salazar was not present for the meeting in the media center, but was instead participating through a teleconference call from a private residence in Long Beach.
Two speakers, who identified themselves as taxpayers, said that this location was not easily accessible to the disabled as required by the Brown Act. The Board heard from its attorney who said they were in compliance with the open meeting law and making reasonable accommodations for the disabled.

Reporter Mary Ford contributed to this story.