Robla teachers urged the Robla School Board on multiple occasions during public comment to direct negotiators to settle a new collective bargaining agreement before the fall, saying current pay and health-benefit contributions are driving staff departures and harming student learning.

"We are calling on you, the board, to direct your bargaining team to come to the table and settle a fair contract that provides resources our team members need to stay," said Leah Boylan, president of the Robla Teachers Association, during the board meeting. She said RTA negotiators had met eight times since February but that critical items remained unresolved.

Why it matters: Teachers said the district’s compensation and benefit package is an outlier in the region and is directly tied to recruitment and retention problems that, they argued, have contributed to lower student achievement. The union presented district data and local comparisons and asked the board to prioritize spending in the near term to avoid more turnover.

Union and teacher details

Leah Boylan, president of the Robla Teachers Association, told the board the district’s salary schedule becomes less competitive after 10 years of service and that Robla limits teacher placement on higher columns until 13 years of service. Boylan cited district and regional comparisons, saying the highest possible salary in Robla is "$110,941," achievable after 30 years, while neighboring districts reach higher top salaries—and earlier. She also cited measurement of student proficiency trends: "the percentage of students below standard in ELA has grown from 29.5 percent in 02/2019 to 61.1 percent in 02/2024," which she linked to staffing instability.

Multiple classroom teachers spoke in support of the bargaining push. Ally Klein, a fifth- and sixth-grade GATE teacher, said Robla’s low health-benefit contribution forces employees to buy coverage through Covered California and that a comparable Elk Grove Unified plan would cost far less. "To cover my family with my district's benefits would cost my family over $2,000 a month," Klein said, noting that neighboring districts provide significantly more support for family coverage.

Special education staff raised workload issues rooted in contract terms. Karen McClurg, an SDC teacher, described uncompensated time required to write Individualized Education Programs (IEPs): "An SDC IEP takes a full work day to complete... We must provide instruction and care for every minute of every day and rarely even have time to check an email. If we want to keep our jobs, we have to write the IEPs on our own time for free." She and others asked for stipends or scheduling changes so mandated special-education paperwork does not fall entirely on teachers’ personal time.

District reserves and budget context

Boylan also called attention to district reserves: "Robla has unrestricted savings reserves of over $23,000,000, equaling over 63% of your yearly operating budget," she said, urging the board to spend more of those funds on current student and staff needs. In response during the superintendent’s report, Superintendent Chen said district leaders were negotiating with labor partners and expressed intent to reach agreements that work for all parties; she also summarized district advocacy work in Sacramento related to special-education funding and universal meals eligibility.

No final board action on bargaining

The board did not take a contract vote at the meeting. Public comment focused on requesting that the board direct its bargaining team to reach a settlement before the new school year; teachers and union leaders said many educators’ decisions about whether to remain in Robla hinge on the outcome.

Ending note

Teachers and union leaders emphasized urgency, asking the board to use available one-time and ongoing resources to make salaries and benefits regionally competitive and to provide stipends or schedule time for required special-education work. The board acknowledged public comment and said negotiations were ongoing; no formal action on a contract was taken at the meeting.