On Tuesday, The Palo Alto Board of Education voted unanimously to approve an ongoing 2 percent salary raise with yearly raise renegotiations for union member teachers and senior managers. At the same meeting, the Board also decided to suspend consideration of a conditional mitigation agreement with Stanford that had been originally reached in April.
The raises were approved through two different measures. According to the Palo Alto Weekly, the first measure raises salaries for members of the Palo Alto Educators Association (PAEA), the union that represents Palo Alto teachers, by $1.2 million for the 2018-19 school year, with another increase to $2.4 million for the 2019-20 school year.
The second measure, which gives raises to senior school managers, was a memorandum of understanding with the Palo Alto Management Association (PAMA), a non-union group representing principals, coordinators, school psychologists and other administrators. The memorandum of understanding with PAMA ensures that salary increases for senior administrators will be tied to salary increases for those negotiated with the teachers union, a process referred to as “me too” raises. The automatic “me too” raises for senior management have been criticized in the past by some of the board members, according to the Palo Alto Weekly.
Three members of the Palo Alto Board of Education also voted to accept Stanford’s request to halt talks over the School Funding and Mitigation agreement. The tentative agreement would have given the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) $138.4 million over the next 40 years in order to compensate for future students at Stanford enrolling in the district. The University asked PAUSD to suspend consideration of the conditional agreement with Stanford to be consistent with the decision by Santa Clara County to suspend development negotiations.
The conditional agreement between the school district and the University has received criticism from County Supervisor Joe Simitian, who called it “regrettable.” He was concerned that the University was “holding hostage” the PAUSD students, using them as “bargaining chips” in its negotiations over a development agreement with the County. Because the conditional agreement was contingent on the outcome of the development agreement between the University and the County, Simitian claimed that it violated ground rules. At the time, Stanford believed that it did not violate any of the County’s ground rules.
Contact Michael Espinosa at mesp2021 ‘at’ stanford.edu.