District proposes external budget analysis for teacher’s contract negotiations impasse Thursday
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. – Negotiations between Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD) and the Santa Barbara Teacher's Association (SBTA) continued Thursday, with a new proposal from the District to avoid a mediation process.
The proposal from SBUSD includes the following sugestions:
- Each party would bring its own budget expert to review all relevant budget documents
- The respective budget experts would meet and confer about a potential path forward without the contesting parties involved
- Budget experts would then present their findings, though not necessarily an agreement, and could provide personal recommendations and findings
- Negotiating teams would then use that analysis to come closer to an agreement with more information than what is currently used to formulate current proposals
The SBUSD emphasized this newest proposal is intended to create a better opportunity to move forward than current methods stating, "We want to reach an agreement and we think this will help".
In response, the SBTA agreed to consider the proposal and provide a response soon detailed a press release from the SBUSD.
The next negotiation session is scheduled for Jan. 19, 2024.
This fourth negotiation update from the SBUSD follows a series of contentious meetings that have spilled over into public demonstrations from both educators and students at several area high schools.
According to the SBUSD, this new format to include respective financial experts follows the resubmission by the SBTA of a 15% increase in pay for the 2024-2025 school year and an 8% increase for the 2025-2026 school year.
In resubmitting their proposal from the Dec. 12 session, the SBTA said, "Today SBTA is standing on our last compensation proposal".
SBTA's resubmission also included an explanation on how those increased costs could be covered by the District's budget and in response, the SBUSD stated that SBTA-provided analysis "reveals vastly different perspectives of the District's finances" stated a press release on the proposal on Jan. 11.
