As costs rise and enrollments dip, can school districts meet teacher demands?

Apr 7

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Districts Reach A Breaking Point
Louis Freedberg0:04
Welcome to Education on the Line, a podcast series focused on the latest threats to public education and strategies for confronting them. I'm Louis Freedberg. School districts across the country, and most visibly in California, are at an inflection point. While districts are faced with rising costs and declining enrollments and other fiscal challenges, how can school districts balance teachers' demands without having to make deep budget cuts and in many cases avoid insolvency? Is that even possible? In this episode, we will look more closely at strategies for managing these tensions while remaining true to school's fundamental mission: educating students and providing them with the skills they need to succeed not only in school but in life. To that end, I'm pleased to welcome three guests today. First, Marguerite Roza. She is research professor at Georgetown University and director of its Edunomics Lab, a research center focused on education, finance, policy, and practice. She leads Georgetown's McCord School of Public Policy certificate in education finance. Welcome, Marguerite Roza.
Marguerite Roza1:20
Thank you.
Louis Freedberg1:20
Also with us is Darin Brawley, the veteran superintendent in Compton Unified. Under his leadership, students in his districts have achieved remarkable academic successes, challenging stereotypes about the district. And notably for this podcast episode, over the 14 years, Darin Brawley has been in the district. He has been able to manage labor tensions without a strike while keeping his district solvent. Welcome, Darin Brawley.
Darin Brawley1:49
Pleasure to be here.
Relief Funds End And Costs Rise
Louis Freedberg1:50
And last but not least, Carrie Hahnel is a longtime education policy analyst who is currently a senior associate partner at Bellwether, the highly regarded consulting firm which works with districts around the country on a range of issues. She is also a board member in the Alameda Unified School District here in the San Francisco Bay Area, which recently reached an agreement with its teachers union and other staff unions in the district. She will share with us how her district was able to accomplish that. Welcome, Carrie Hahnel. Thanks. Great to be here. Well, let me start with you, Marguerite Roza. You guys are really drilling down as to how districts can navigate this very perilous landscape and offering some very practical advice for school leaders.
Marguerite Roza2:41
We are switching from a moment where districts were flush with cash. They had a lot of money from the federal relief funds that came out after the pandemic following several years of healthy state revenues. And so for the most part, each year, districts were spending more money than they had the year before. But that is changing really quickly. For one, the federal relief funds are gone, and we knew it was going to end. Also, districts brought on a lot of staff with those funds, teachers, other kinds of employees. And so now they have more employees than at any time in the past. And this is happening while their enrollments are falling. And that's because birth rates are down. So we're seeing fewer five-year-olds and six-year-olds in the school system. Some districts had benefited from having more immigrant students sort of offset that decline in birth rates. That's not happening anymore. And when districts have fewer students, they have fewer dollars. And that's because funding formulas, for the most part, are structured around enrollment. So as districts are shrinking, these cost pressures are coming to a head. Most of what is on the expense side of districts is labor, salaries, and expenses. Staffing is up, and most of what's driving that revenue is enrollment, and enrollment is down. And that's the pickle that districts are in right now.
Louis Freedberg4:15
This seems like two irreconcilable forces coming to a head.
Marguerite Roza4:20
It's not irreconcilable, it's just unpleasant. So if you are a district that now has 10% fewer students, the obvious answer is that you would have 10% fewer staff. And what we're seeing is the opposite is that districts have brought on more staff and are reluctant to downsize their staffing. And part of that is because it's really hard in public education to hand out pink slips. We, you know, obviously have organized labor that doesn't love that. It means you might have to close schools. Parents don't love that. But it is possible, it happens all the time. If you have fewer students, you would need fewer staff. If you are unwilling to reduce your staffing, then it means you can't give people raises, right? That's that trade-off.
Louis Freedberg5:09
Well, just share with us, and I know you you guys do whole webinars on this, but some pointers for school leaders in this position and school board members who are trying to get through this.
Marguerite Roza5:23
First thing I would say is make sure you understand your numbers. And the Egenomics Lab website, we have a tool called Wanda that can show you over the last five years what's happened to your staffing in different categories and what's happened to your enrollment. They're all different. You know, some have added a lot of paraprofessionals, some have added a lot of assistant principals and specialists and central office leaders, some have actually not. They've held those steady or even started to shrink their staffing as their enrollment has fallen. The union's role is to advocate for their members. The district's job is to advocate for the students. Those are different jobs. And we sometimes see district leaders forgetting about that. And I know that we have board members that got an endorsement for their union, but once you're on the school district side, you're a board member or a district leader, then yes, of course you would like to leave your employees and make them, you would like to keep them happy. But more important is that you focus on each trade-off with what is best for the students who attend our school district. And those just important roles, there's they're getting harder for both sides to negotiate, but it it is incumbent on the district leaders to put the students at the center and in their negotiations.
Louis Freedberg6:47
I hear the unions are often saying they're the only ones who care about the students. And if the school board doesn't care about the students by proposing these cuts.
Marguerite Roza6:57
I think the way to break through that narrative is to lay it out for people. So if the union is asking for, let's say, a 17% pay increase and the district has a fixed amount of money, the union might argue we need this pay raise. A lot of times the union will say the district has money sitting right there, and why aren't they spending it? And the district needs to be clear that that money is in reserves. And if we are going to be stewards of these public funds and make sure this district is financially healthy this year and next year and for years to come, but we're going to spend down all our reserves on something that's not an emergency that we can see coming, then we are imperiling the financial future of the district. So the public needs to hear this information. They're not going to get it from the union. Too often the only information they're getting is from union soundbites. And that's a mistake, I would say, if districts have seeded the narrative. They don't have to be mean, they don't have to be angry, but districts do need to be clear and transparent about why these trade-offs may not be the best thing for students.
Louis Freedberg8:07
Well, I'm sure Darin Brawley, a lot of what Marguerite Roza is saying resonates with you. Share with us how you have managed over the last 14 years to have avoided a teacher's strike. I should point out you are in the middle of labor negotiations right now, so we'll see what happens.
Darin Brawley8:27
Well, it's interesting. You know, Compton, we have five labor unions. We have Teamsters, we have Police Officers Association, CSEA, SEIU, and CEA, which represents the teachers. Why hasn't Compton Unified experienced strikes? I would say that we're not immune to it. Certainly we're we're seeing a rise in the number of strikes that are occurring or labor actions that are occurring. But what we attempt to do is reduce the likelihood of things escalating towards a strike by staying engaged and being very transparent about those realities. You know, across all five of our bargaining units, we've worked hard, very hard, to ensure that there's an understanding that not all dollars are created equal.
Louis Freedberg9:13
Meaning?
Darin Brawley9:14
Meaning that, you know, you have restricted dollars, you have unrestricted dollars, you have money that can be spent a certain way, money that cannot be spent on compensating employees. And in that process, we try and clarify what's restricted, what's already committed, what's put into a reserve, what's the purpose of that reserve in terms of what we're trying to accomplish for the students as well as faculty in terms of facility needs, things like that. And that doesn't mean that we always eliminate the disagreement, but it does create a shared understanding of the framework that we operate within. And so we take a lot of time to really focus on that. And you know, it takes a lot of work. We're in an interesting times right now in terms of what's happening across California. We're seeing a convergence of pressures, right? Related to cost of living. You know, with COVID happening, the cost of living went up dramatically. It hasn't really come back down. Even though some of the escalation of costs have been minimized, nothing has returned back to where it was, and it's not going to. So we see the cost of living, we see the coordinated bargaining issues across the state with 32 districts, and we see a misunderstanding of how school district funding actually works. So there's this assumption that occurs with a lot of people. You get a COLA right? So the district gets increased funding. That's how people see that. And they see see it as broad flexibility in terms of how districts can spend that money. But in reality, a significant portion of a COLA is already consumed. It's already taken up by step and column increases, as well as the cost of benefits and the cost of statutory benefits related to retirement. So there's a lot of different things that a school district has to take into consideration that the average employee within an organization doesn't even quite understand.
Louis Freedberg11:16
Just to clarify, I'm sure most of our listeners know what step and column increases are, but these are the increases that are just baked into a contract that the more time you serve in the district, the more credentials, the more college credits you get, and so on, your salary goes up, right?
Darin Brawley11:33
That's correct. So at the same time, you know, districts are experiencing all these rising costs, if you will, right? The costs associated with pensions, costs associated with health care, costs associated with step and column increases. And all of those different pressures already take up the typical COLA that we've been receiving. You know, unless a district receives, let's say, a six percent COLA or more from the state. From the state of California. If if that COLA is not six percent or more, that COLA is already consumed when it's 3.5 or 3% or less. It's already consumed. Whether we're talking about the pensions, whether we're talking about the health care costs, whether we're talking about the step and column increases, the benefits associated with health care, as well as uh statutory benefits for employing uh certificated and classified employees. So what you're seeing is i a gap between perception and fiscal reality uh that exists within most organizations. Most people don't understand that.
Louis Freedberg12:37
But have you been able to get your unions to kind of see eye to eye with you on this?
Darin Brawley12:44
For the most part, yes. You get four out of five of us seeing that, you're always going to have an outlier, right? And so everyone's not going to be able to see it. And it really comes down to the dialogue that is occurring and whose version of what is being told individuals want to believe.
Louis Freedberg13:02
Well, I see Carrie Hannel. She's nodding her head. Carrie, you're on the board in the Alameda Unified School District. Your unions were threatening to strike, and somehow you were able to reach an agreement. So how did you manage that?
Speaker13:19
Yeah, so I'm a first-time new board member. The day that I was sworn in, our teachers declared impasse. And so my entire tenure has been marked by labor negotiations. Um, we were able to arrive at a three-year contract, which we're really pleased with. We recognize that we're in a fortunate position. Many of the districts around us are still struggling with negotiations. We've seen strikes around the Bay Area, and there was a chance that we were headed in that direction. I agree with Superintendent Brawley that none of us are immune. There is very much coordinated pressure across the state that all of us are feeling, and for real reasons. The costs are rising significantly for all people, including teachers in our communities. And it's tough to afford to live in a place like the Bay Area. At the same time, one of the things that we did is we emphasized that we are focused on fiscal prudence in this district. We have been staying the course for quite a long time. We've had steadiness on the leadership team on the board, you know, with a couple of positions moving in and out for quite some time. And the district has really focused on fiscal conservativism. We did not use COVID relief funds for ongoing commitments. We used them for one-time purposes. We have built up our reserves. That put us in a really good place to be able to have some creative conversations with our bargaining units as we went through negotiations. We weren't able to give them everything that they were asking for, but we arrived at a three-year, 10% deal with an additional 2% bonus in the first year, and we're able to increase our health benefits. That wasn't easy and it's not without some risk. I will acknowledge that we did have to dip into our one-time funds and our reserves to be able to afford that agreement. We are going to have to make some reductions. And that's something that we've tried to message with the community that these are all trade-offs.
Speaker15:10
As Marguerite described, we can increase compensation as long as we're willing to do something else. With 80 to 90% of our budget and compensation of some kind or another, that means there are only a few levers we can pull. This is a seesaw. So if you compensation goes up, something needs to go down, whether that's number of programs, number of electives, number of sports, number of school sites, class size maybe needs to go up. These are all the conversations that we need to have. We have signaled to our community along the way that this comes with trade-off conversations that will follow. That's not a popular thing to say, and it's not been well received. I think it's it's fair that labor groups will accuse districts of making threats when they caution that we can offer you more, but we might need to do away with something else. But that's just the reality. We can't do everything within the budget that we have for all the reasons we've talked about here. I think the other thing that's hard to understand in California and many other states that have had some economically good times is that the state budget has been good and per-pupil funding has increased. And when that message is coming from the state and legislators are celebrating how much they're investing in education, it is confusing that at the local level we're talking about how we can't afford these agreements or how we need to make cuts. We have been accused at the local level at times of crying wolf, saying that we we need to be conservative and that we can't meet all the demands. But then the revenues continue to appear or the one-time funds show up. And I'd say as a board member, we're happy to be in the position of being accused of crying wolf if that means that we are protecting our fiscal future today, recognizing that maybe some additional revenues come and we can do more, but we'd rather be in that position than have to make significant cuts. So we're pleased with where we landed, and we also know there's a lot of hard work ahead.
Alameda Unified’s Agreement And The Budget Seesaw
Louis Freedberg17:16
The superintendent has to demand more money from the state. On the other hand, states are spending a big chunk of their budgets already on education. I mean, in California, it's on average 40%. And that doesn't include other funds that might be going to schools. So how do you deal with that? Where we all agree, yes, it would be very nice, but it's certainly not going to happen by next week when you're trying to negotiate a labor contract.
Carrie Hahnel17:42
That's right. And it's very difficult to make the argument that we should be borrowing money from some other program in order to increase education funding and increasing taxes as a long-term game. I think that the labor groups across the state have been really well coordinated and very savvy in demanding that districts put more onto the bargaining table because that increases pressure on the state. Elected officials representing their local communities want to go ask for more money and do what they can. So it's a i strategy that makes sense for them as advocates to be engaged in, but it's a long-term strategy. At the end of the day, one of the things that we need to be talking about at the local level is how to get creative with the money that we have. Part of the challenge is that there's a resistance to changing what we know. Nobody wants to reduce the number of school sites, to lose an elective, even if it's dwindled to 15, then 12, then 10 students showing up for that elective. But we need to start talking about things like how do we share courses across school sites so that you offer that elective once and offer it to two high schools instead of having a teacher at both school sites, sharing sports programs, leveraging dual enrollment to try to find efficiencies, but also extend the number of course offerings that are on the table. These are all the kinds of things that we need to think about differently. Technology and AI create all kinds of new possibilities for how we deliver instruction. We need to start playing with different schedules that students are rotating through classes in a different way, spending time on and off campus in different ways. There are ways to think about how to deliver the instruction and the learning opportunities that honestly that students and families want within the fiscal constraints that we have, but it requires pushing past the status quo. And that's never popular because oftentimes that means somebody loses their job or the job description changes, and you're going to get resistance anytime you try to do that.
Louis Freedberg19:35
Let me ask Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. And I would encourage you all to go and look at the website because there's a lot of material there that I think is very, very helpful. But in terms of what Carrie was saying, being smarter about how you go about some of these strategies, like, for example, when you have to close schools or merge schools in a way that doesn't necessarily generate a lot of resistance.
Marguerite Roza20:03
I think that districts do have hard choices to make and they don't have necessarily a lot of recent experience making these decisions. Closing schools is one. I think even when we talk about the money, the public doesn't understand maybe the scope of the enrollment declines. So you think about Los Angeles Unified, that's a district that has lost 90,000 students in five years. So you think about how many students are have disappeared and how many schools that would mean they would have to close if they were still going to operate on their amount. And California has really increased its investment in schools. It's all in. Districts are spending over $18,000 a kid right now. And sure, could the state spend more? Obviously, but it's the job of the district to spend what it has. That's its job. So there's not like a secret ATM that the district has. And if the leaders were just nice enough, they would punch in the code and get a bunch of new cash out. I think what the district needs to do is explain to the community we can leave these schools open and spread our limited dollars across too many buildings. That means nobody's going to get electives, nobody's going to get orchestra, and you know, nobody's going to have a counselor or a nurse or those kinds of things. Or we can consolidate our staffing down to a smaller number of schools, and that means we will still be able to offer the full complement of services that people expect to have athletics and AP classes and so on. So the trade-offs are real and helping people understand that it's not just the schools on the list for closure that are affected by this, but if we decide not to close those, all of our schools, including the ones we were always planning to keep open, are going to have thinner services across the board. So that's the sort of trade off. I think the other thing for districts is that with ESSER federal relief funds, a lot of districts added a lot of new positions. And many of them are specialists, assistant principals, deans, central office staff, et cetera, that are coaches that are in districts. We need to examine whether or not it's going to make sense to keep that new set of positions, or whether or not some of those people will need to return to the classroom, and whether or not we got the full value out of these investments. Because each time we make an investment, we have to say, is it really paying off? I think if you fast forward a few years, you're going to see districts that cut and cut and cut and eroded their school systems. And then you're going to see other ones that worked hard to become smaller and stronger. They've prioritized quality over quantity. And they redesigned their school systems for the student populations they had left. And so that's going to be an explanation to parents that we can we can go about this in a way that slowly and gradually erodes what we offer. Or we can be smart, think about it up front. And that's going to take some cooperation with the union, but we're not going to do things the exact same way we've done in the past few years.
Louis Freedberg23:17
One of the recommendations that I saw you make or arguments you made is that we all believe in a range of support services, but what's most important is having a quality teacher in the classroom. And I think one of your recommendations was, and you were referring to this, all the teachers who now have become heads of different programs in the district who are credentials and often the most experienced teachers. So when you are laying off people or you have to cut back, putting those people back in the classroom so you're not losing that talent.
Marguerite Roza23:56
I'm a fan of putting your best talent in the classroom with the kids and then paying them well. So I would like to see teachers who are in the classroom get pay raises. Oftentimes we'll raise their pay if they leave the classroom. But in some ways, that's like taking your star basketball player and pulling them off the court and then saying, now, you know, their best bet is that you could advise the rest of the players. And I would say that talent needs to be on those front lines. And there are districts that do that, where they pay their teachers so well that teachers are reluctant to take these other non-classroom positions. So that's a trade-off that districts are going to have to see. But some of these other positions we don't need if we have excellent teachers in the classroom. So too many kids, you know, get referred for special ed if we have weak instruction in the classroom, or teachers need a lot more support and coaching and mentoring if they're a weaker set of teachers. So where we can hold on to our absolute best talent, pay them well, and keep them in the classroom, I think students will benefit.
Louis Freedberg25:01
Darin Brawley from Compton. Just wondering, you're having this discussion, we need to tell parents the actual situation, explain to them the trade-offs and so on. Is that really possible to get that message across? Parents instinctively are pro-teachers. They know the teachers. They might love their teachers. And so, yes, my kid's teacher needs more money, and they're not really interested in all those other rational arguments about budgets. But how does one get that message across?
Darin Brawley25:34
Is it possible? I believe it's possible, but it it depends on context. You know, context is everything. So I'll give you an example. A few years ago, we had to close a school. It's been several years now. And the enrollment of that particular school had gotten down to about 230 students, roughly. Whereas the rest of the schools at that time were anywhere from 500 to 800 in terms of our elementary school sites. And so this particular school was not generating the categorical funding that it should be able to generate to provide the services that the other school sites were able to provide to their students. So we we had some town hall meetings where we basically explain look, based upon the size of the school, your child is at a disadvantage for the STEM programs that we're offering, for the arts programs that we're offering. So the things that we're able to offer at other school sites because they received more categorical funding and the administrators can make choices about the things that they want to fund, you really don't have that access for your child based upon the low enrollment of this particular school site. So once we were able to break that down, the opposition to closing that school site, it whittled away. And parents were able to understand that, yes i makes more sense for my child to be at a larger school where there are more options, more things for him or her to explore, to become involved with, to participate in, versus remaining at a small school that cannot offer my child the same types of services. So context matters. And when you're able to break it down in a way that people can actually understand in terms of what their child is getting out of it versus what they will be missing out on, you can make some breakthrough headlines. Now, when we're talking about compensation, I mean, let's just be fair, there's nobody on this podcast that does not believe that teachers, classified employees, even administrators should not be paid more. And so it's a compelling argument. Yes, they deserve more. But at the end of the day, the school district's responsibility is to remain fiscally solvent. And if you cannot remain fiscally solvent, then everything that our other panelists have talked about, those become reality. You cannot offer everything under the sun when the costs associated with offering those begin to skyrap it to a point where you can no longer afford it. And so one of the things that I like to talk about along the way is the ability of a district to right size along the way. A lot of districts did not do the right sizing that was necessary. And what do I mean by right sizing? It means aligning your staffing and resources with your current enrollment. It's difficult because it impacts people, right? But it's necessary to maintain fiscal solvency. And avoiding those decisions may feel easier in the short term, but it creates much bigger challenges down the line. So it's easier to cut right away than to avoid those cuts, which continue to skyrocket out of control and lead school districts into a much tougher fiscal issue later on in terms of the cuts that they have to make. By waiting, you actually wind up impacting many more people.
Louis Freedberg29:10
I was talking with Mike Fine in California here, runs the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team. And he was saying, you know, in the past, in California and around the country, enrollments are growing. So school district could say, well, next year we'll get more money, more kids, and so you could offer the salary increases and you can kind of plan for some increases. Now the situation is just the reverse. You're actually planning for less money next year, and not this next year, for the next several decades. So this actually gets to the core of how schools are going to function in the future. And I just reported on the strike in West Contra Costa Unified at school district here in the Bay Area. Really bitter strike, and school district now is making all these cutbacks, layoffs just, you know, weeks after the strike. It's just really a tragic situation. Carrie Hahnel. Carrie, I didn't mention you're wearing another hat. You're a parent in the district. How do you get people on the same page? So we're not like people who should be allies or fighting with each other.
Carrie Hahnel30:18
Parents are only going to be paying attention to the district budget and these decisions at key moments when it affects them or their child. Otherwise, they're not paying attention. They are paying attention to what's happening to their child at their school site in their classrooms every day. And so parents need to feel that things are stable, steady, predictable, and that their child's needs are being attended to. A lot of times it's easy for us to get distracted by these conversations and these flashpoints of tension. But the reality is that the fiscal discipline ensures that districts can stay the course and ensure that there's that predictability and that stability for kids at the school site. So I think what creates trust for parents is knowing what's going to be happening at school, knowing that those teachers are there every day, that they're adequately supported and paid, that there's additional supports when their kids need them. As much as it's important for districts to be transparent and clear about the budget, the reality is that I don't think our charge is really to help every parent in the district understand the budget. It's to ensure that parents understand what's happening at their school sites and feel like things are on track. And that's what creates trust in the community. When we get to this point where we're pushing up the difficult decisions because we don't want to face them, because it's really tough to make staff reductions or to make cuts, that just fosters more discord and distrust, which causes all these other things to worsen. And so as much as it's difficult for board members and district leaders to make the difficult decisions, that's what ultimately keeps the community rolling. We've been fortunate in Alameda to have several parcel taxes that have renewed every time they've gone on the ballot. One of the more recent ones was specifically to increase teachers' salaries. And when we pegged it to teacher salaries, we got a lot of support from the community. So we're we're grateful to have their support and their trust. And unfortunately, that means sometimes the conversation is about tough issues, and that's our job. Like Marguerite said, like Superintendent Burley said, we're we're there to make the tough calls so that things are stable for our kids and our teachers.
Louis Freedberg32:29
Marguerite Roza, just to wrap up our conversation, how do we get people on the same page so we are working together, not fighting with people who should be allies?
Marguerite Roza32:42
The stakes are really high here. So if a district overcommits in its labor contract, we just saw this in Portland, Oregon, they overcommitted, and now they're stuck with a contract they can't afford, and they're cutting days of school off of the school year. And so kids are getting fewer days. This is not a pro-student outcome in any kind of way. It's actually not even great for staff because they lose pay on those days. So I think if we can be really honest with what we can afford and be willing to come back to the table if resources are better than we thought, and make sure we're even both committed to better outcomes for students. I think we can have those conversations. But I think there are a lot of school board members that are kind of scared to go head to head with the union in this conversation. And it doesn't have to be hostile. But you will sometimes hear the union misinforming their members about the money and the trade-offs. And then I do think that the district has to step in in some sort of way and make sure that their staff understand that if we agree to this, then I'm going to have to issue 100 pink slips and here's who will lose their job. Or that, you know, we're obligating for these more funds, but we don't have a way to pay for them. And then we're going to have to be doing really disruptive cuts to electives and AP tests and AP courses and all those other kinds of things. So communication is the way to go, and we need to be doing a lot more of it.
Louis Freedberg34:13
Marguerite Roza, Research Professor at Georgetown University and director of its Edunomics Lab. Really appreciate you joining us today.
Marguerite Roza34:23
Thank you for having me.
Louis Freedberg34:25
And thanks to Darin Brawley, superintendent at Compton Unified. Really appreciate your insights.
Darin Brawley34:32
Thank you.
Louis Freedberg34:33
And Carrie Hahnel from the consulting firm Bellwether and school board member at Alameda Unified in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thanks so much, Carrie.
Closing Thanks And How To Respond
Carrie Hahnel34:44
Thanks, Louis.
Louis Freedberg34:45
On that note, we have to bring this episode of Education on the Line to a close. Our producer is Coby McDonald, and our advisor is Pedro Noguera, Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. Also, thanks to our sponsors, the Hewlett Foundation. Please share with us your advice on effective strategies for traversing some of these minefields that we talked about today. You can reach us by going to our website at educationontheine.com. That's educationon.com. And please subscribe to Education on the Line wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Louis Freedberg. Thanks for joining us.

School districts across California and the nation are caught in a financial vise. Enrollments are falling, federal COVID relief funds have been depleted, and costs keep rising. Meanwhile, growing numbers of teacher's can't even afford to live in the districts where they work. That’s especially the case in high-cost states like California, where teachers and other staff are walking off the job in record numbers

So how do you give teachers the raises that almost everyone agrees they need without triggering deep cuts or even risking insolvency? And is it even possible?

In this episode, we explore that question with three guests who are grappling with it from very different vantage points. Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, breaks down the structural forces squeezing district budgets and makes the case that many districts have staffing levels misaligned with their shrinking enrollments — a reckoning that's now unavoidable. Darin Brawley, superintendent of Compton Unified, has managed a district with five labor unions for 14 years without a strike, and explains how radical transparency about the budget has helped keep his district out of crisis. And Carrie Hahnel, a board member at Alameda Unified and a senior associate partner at Bellwether, describes how her district recently navigated a threatened strike and reached a three-year contract — and what trade-offs came with it.

The conversation is honest about how hard these choices are. The challenge is whether districts and unions can make these trade-offs together.

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Guests:

Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University
Darin Brawley, superintendent of Compton Unified
Carrie Hahnel, a board member at Alameda Unified and a senior associate partner at Bellwether