Rancho Santa Fe teachers march together as contract negotiations resume this month

On the morning of Nov. 3, R. Roger Rowe School teachers walked into school together as a group, in solidarity with the Rancho Santa Fe Faculty Association as its first contract negotiation session of the new school year is scheduled in the coming weeks.

As students were arriving on campus the teachers walked in front of the school holding a variety of homemade signs with messages like “We teach, we care, be fair!”, “Teachers are the heart of the school” and “If we can’t afford to live in S.D., we can’t afford to teach here.”

Rancho Santa Fe School District teachers have been working without an updated contract since July 1, 2022. The RSF Faculty Association is negotiating with the district to provide increased healthcare coverage, a comparable pay scale to surrounding districts and master’s stipends for teachers with advanced degrees, which the district has never offered.

Per Transparent California, the average pay for a Rancho Santa Fe teacher in 2022 was $82,420, not including benefits. In the neighboring Solana Beach School District teachers average $99,674 a year and in San Dieguito Union High School District, where the certificated teachers’ contract stipulates that they be the highest paid in the county, the average pay is $105,983 annually.

While Rancho Santa Fe does not offer an annual master’s stipend, all neighboring districts do—Solana Beach offers a stipend of $1,750 and San Dieguito pays $2,344 while Vista offers the highest with $2,761 annually. As one teacher’s sign read: “Value education, approve master’s stipends”.

The teachers demonstrated similarly earlier this year in May. As they gathered in the staff parking lot on Friday, teacher Mandy Valentine said teachers believe things have been moving in a good direction and they believe a positive result can be reached this month.

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“The school district has faced a multitude of changes in the past year, but the one thing that remains consistent is the teaching staff caring for Rancho Santa Fe children and providing high levels of education,” Valentine said.

In a statement, RSF School District Superintendent Tom Bennett said as part of the negotiations, the district proposed a new salary schedule for 2022-23 that represents “the largest salary increase the district has ever made for our teachers with an average increase of 6.59%.”

“On top of that, the district offered an additional 4% increase for this current school year, as well as a substantial increase to health and welfare benefits and other changes requested by the faculty association.”

“The district’s offer ensures our teacher salaries remain competitive with surrounding school districts,” Bennett continued. “Although I have yet to participate in the negotiation process, I look forward to quickly resolving negotiations so that we can focus all our attention on achieving exceptionally great things for our students as a unified team, aligned in purpose.”

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In June, the school board approved a 4% on-schedule salary increase for its classified staff and certificated administrators. That month the board also approved a budget for 2023-24 with proposed revenues of $14.8 million and expenditures of $15.2 million (not including the pending negotiations), projecting to deficit spend by $354,671. The district is projected to continue to deficit spend in the next two years. The district’s reserves remain healthy, at a level of about 22%.

Rowe teachers held signs as they walked into school together.

(Karen Billing)