A new state law allowing public school trustees to sign off on giving themselves huge pay bumps has raised alarm bells across San Diego County — and the debate on how much is too much could soon be raging in communities with massive budget deficits across California.
School districts for Carlsbad, Cajon Valley, Escondido and Oceanside all approved or budgeted an increase in trustee stipends between 300-400%, according to an NBC San Diego report. Meanwhile, districts in the county are facing layoffs and even a school closure, but the trustee pay bumps are still being pushed forward.
The passage of AB 1390 — authored by Assemblymember José Luis Solache, Jr. and signed into law last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom — started with what many say are good intentions to offer better stipend after decades of flat pay for grueling work.
But the controversial raises — now up to $3,000 a month based on district size — in the face of huge deficits has become a hot button issue. Original draft legislation showed Solache initially tried to jack up the monthly stipends as high as $7,500 a month.
In places like Cajon Valley, where district trustees boosted their monthly stipends from $600 to $2,000 while district staff are being laid off, the pay bumps have come off as a gross prioritization of funds.
“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should,” said Mark Reagles, a school bus mechanic who has worked nearly two decades in the Cajon Valley Unified School District.
Reagles, president of the district’s classified employees union, told The Post that school districts across San Diego County are facing deficits that are requiring layoffs and cuts. He noted that trustees may deserve a little more money, but not when his district is slashing jobs.
Cajon Valley will lose $120K a year out of the general fund to pay for the trustees’ pay increases, Reagles said, which comes on top of health benefits for trustees and their families.
“I’m losing three people to layoffs,” Reagles said, “and that $120K almost would have paid their entire salaries.”
Officials for the San Diego County Office of Education declined to comment, as did officials for the San Diego Education Association and the California Teachers Association.
Scott Davison, an attorney and parent in Carlsbad who now leads the Carlsbad Education Alliance, told The Post that trustee pay bumps are a complex issue.
The topic can quickly become a fierce point of contention depending on the state of labor negotiations and whether teacher unions have control of the school board.
“We’ve seen the alignment of opposition come down whether the teacher union has a positive or negative relationship with the board,” Davison said.
Trustees in Carslbad’s district just signed off on their own huge raises, but they’re not facing the same wrath as elsewhere in San Diego County.
“The funny thing is, in our [Carlsbad] school district, we have a union majority — three of the trustees were funded and elected by the teachers union,” Davison said. “When the issue came up, we didn’t really see anybody oppose it, because they’re not in a year when they are negotiating contracts.”
Brandi Krepps, president of the Escondido Elementary Educators Association, told NBC San Diego that trsutees giving themselves a 400% raise in her district would make things “ugly.”
“Our site budgets have been slashed, stating that there’s budgetary constraints, yet we have money to give our school board members an additional stipend,” Krepps said. “It’s just, it’s really infuriating.”
Reagles warned that more school districts in California could see similar actions taken to boost trustee pay despite few dollars to go around.
“This time of year is layoff season across the state of California for thousands of school districts,” Reagles said. “This is not the time to do it.”
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