The governing board of the Saugus Union School District is scheduled Tuesday to approve the respective tentative agreements between the district and its teachers and classified employees.
The tentative agreements were struck earlier this month and call for all union employees to receive 1% on-schedule salary increases and 1% off-schedule payments, retroactive to July 1, 2023.
Those same salary increases are also up for approval for management, confidential and unrepresented employees, as well as employees within the Child Development Program.
The tentative agreement for California School Employees Association Chapter 112, which represents Saugus school district classified employees, was set to be ratified earlier this month. The Saugus Teachers Association ratified it the day after the agreements were struck with 78% of the union members voting to do so.
In a statement sent to The Signal when the tentative agreements were struck, Superintendent Colleen Hawkins said the district is “satisfied that our collaboration with our labor partners on the salary negotiations has reached a conclusion for this school year.”
“While we always want to provide as much as possible to our labor partners, the current budget crisis at the state level has made it difficult for the second-lowest funded district in L.A. County, SUSD, to provide more than the 1% on- and 1% off-schedule increase this year,” Hawkins said in the statement. “We hope that California will see better financial increases in the future that will allow school districts to provide additional compensation to their teachers and classified staff. We thank the leadership of STA and CSEA for their unwavering advocacy of their unit members and for their collaboration during the negotiation season.”
California is facing an estimated $47 billion budget shortfall as state officials continue to lock down the state’s budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The cost-of-living adjustment is also projected to be less than 1% after sitting at 8.22% this past school year.
Those factors, among others, have contributed to school districts across the state preparing for less funding at both the state and federal level. Saugus district officials are estimating that there will be a little under $136 million in revenues against about $139 million in expenditures for the 2024-25 school year.
That represents approximately 1.5% less in revenue and 0.7% more in expenditures than what the district is estimated for the 2023-24 school year.
The governing board is set to approve the budget at Tuesday’s meeting as well.
Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:40 p.m. at the district’s administrative office located at 24930 Avenue Stanford, Valencia.
