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Stockton board rejects tentative SPPA contract after speech‑language pathologists and community raise equity concerns
Summary
After public comments from speech‑language pathologists and union leaders, the Stockton Unified board voted down a tentative agreement with SPPA on a 3–4 roll call, citing members’ concerns that recent rebenching and one‑time payments left SLPs excluded from a proposed retention bonus and COLA distribution.
The Stockton Unified School District Board of Trustees declined to ratify a tentative collective‑bargaining agreement with the Stockton Pupil Personnel Association (SPPA) on Tuesday after several speech‑language pathologists and union leaders urged the board to reject the deal.
During public comment, speech‑language pathologist Rachel Green told trustees, “We are asking the board to vote no on ratifying this TA because it fails to represent all SPPA members equally and it unfairly targets 1 subgroup within the unit.” Laurie Baker and others described a longstanding SLP shortage in the district and argued the tentative agreement would redistribute funds away from SLPs after last year’s rebenching and one‑time payments.
Jake Hurley, the district’s director of labor relations and chief negotiator, described the bargaining context to the board, saying the unit is “a patchwork of different professions” and that the union ratified the agreement internally after negotiating a reallocation of limited resources across classifications. Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez and district negotiators said the proposal reflected tradeoffs made at the bargaining table after prior compensation adjustments for certain classifications.
On the roll call vote the motion to ratify failed 3–4: President Sofia Colon, Vice President Shauna Priest and Clerk Patrick Martin voted yes; Trustees Donald Donaire, Isabel Perez, Kanita Stevens and Frank Silva voted no. The defeat means the district’s negotiators will return to the table to seek a different allocation of the agreed resources.
The central dispute presented to the board was procedural and distributive: SLPs recently received substantial salary rebenching and a one‑time payment, and union negotiators proposed redistributing amounts that had been proposed for a uniform 1.75% across‑the‑board increase and a retention bonus. The district said that, if the board had approved the agreement, members of the bargaining unit who previously received a one‑time payment would not have been eligible for the $5,000 retention payment in the new agreement.
Next steps were not immediately defined by trustees at the meeting; labor relations staff indicated they would return to bargaining with SPPA. The district and union declined to provide additional comment beyond statements made during the public meeting.
